Walli said: “My sister escaped.”

“But her husband was crippled.”

Rebecca and Bernd were married now and living in Hamburg. Both were schoolteachers, even though Bernd was in a wheelchair: he had not yet recovered completely from his fall. Their letters to Carla and Werner were always delayed by the censors, but they got through in the end.

“I don’t want to live here, anyway,” said Walli derisively. “I’ll spend my life singing songs that are approved by the Communist Party, and you’ll be a bookkeeper so that your father can keep his job in the bus garage. I’d rather be dead.”

“Communism can’t last forever.”

“Why not? It’s lasted since 1917. And what if we have children?”

“What makes you say that?” she asked sharply.

“If we stay here, we’re not just condemning ourselves to a life in prison. Our children will suffer, too.”

“Do you want to have children?”

Walli had not intended to raise this subject. He did not know whether he wanted children. First he needed to save his own life. “Well, I don’t want to have children in East Germany,” he said. He had not thought of this before, but now that he had said it he felt sure of it.

Karolin looked serious. “Then maybe we should escape,” she said. “But how?”

Walli had toyed with many ideas, but he had a favorite. “Have you seen the checkpoint near my school?”

“I’ve never really looked.”

“It’s used by vehicles carrying goods to West Berlin—meat, vegetables, cheese, and so on.” The East German government did not like feeding West Berlin, but they needed the money, according to Walli’s father.

“And . . . ?”

Walli had worked out some details in his fantasy. “The barrier is a single length of timber about six inches thick. You show your papers, then the guard swings up the barrier to let your truck in. They inspect your load in the compound, then there’s another similar barrier to the exit.”

“Yes, I recall the setup.”

Walli made his voice more confident than he felt. “It strikes me that a driver who had trouble with the guards could probably crash through both barriers.”

“Oh, Walli, it’s so dangerous!”

“There’s no safe way to get out.”

“You don’t have a truck.”

“We’ll steal this van.” After the show, Joe always sat in the bar while Walli packed up the drum kit and loaded the van. By the time Walli was finished, Joe was more or less drunk, and Walli would drive him home. Walli did not have a license, but Joe did not know that, and he had never been sober enough to notice Walli’s erratic driving. After helping Joe into his apartment, Walli had to stash the kit in the hallway, then garage the van. “I could take it tonight, after the show,” he said to Karolin. “We could go across first thing in the morning, as soon as the checkpoint opens.”

“If I’m late home my father will come looking for me.”