“Take me back,” he pleaded.

“No.”

“Please.”

“The answer is no,” she said. “It will always be no. Nothing you could say would change my mind. Please don’t force me to use harsh words to make you understand.” I don’t know why I’m reluctant to hurt him, she thought; he never hesitated to be cruel to me. “Just accept what I have said to you and leave.”

“All right,” he said sadly. “I knew you’d say this, but I had to try.” He stood up. “Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you for that year of happiness. I will always love you.” He turned away and walked out of the restaurant.

Rebecca stared after him, still deep in shock. God in heaven, she thought; I wasn’t expecting that.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

It was a cold November day in Berlin, with an obscuring mist and a brimstone smell of sulfur in the air from the smoky factories in the infernal East. Tanya, hastily transferred here from Warsaw to help cover the mounting crisis, felt that East Germany was about to have a heart attack. Everything was breaking down. In a remarkable repeat of what had happened in 1961 before the Wall went up, so many people had fled to the West that schools were closing for lack of teachers and hospitals were running on skeleton staffing. Those who remained behind became more and more angry and frustrated.

The new leader, Egon Krenz, was focusing on travel. He hoped that if he could satisfy people on that issue, other grievances would fade away. Tanya thought he was wrong: demanding more freedom was likely to become a habit with East Germans. Krenz had published new travel regulations on November 6 that would permit people to go abroad, with permission from the Interior Ministry, taking with them fifteen deutschmarks, about enough for a plate of sausages and a stein of beer in West Germany. This concession was scorned by the public. Today, November 9, the increasingly desperate leader had called a press conference to reveal yet another new travel law.

Tanya sympathized with the yearning of East Germans to be free to go where they wished. She longed for the same liberty for herself and Vasili. He was world famous, but he had to hide behind a pseudonym. He had never left the Soviet Union, where his books were not published. He should be able to go and accept in person the prizes his alter ego had won, and bask a little in the sunshine of acclaim—and she wanted to go with him.

Unfortunately she did not see how East Germany could ever set its people free. It could hardly exist as an independent state: that was why they had built the Wall in the first place. If they let their citizens travel, millions would leave permanently. West Germany might be a prissily conservative country, with old-fashioned attitudes on women’s rights, but it was a paradise by comparison with the East. No country could survive the exodus of its most enterprising young people. Therefore Krenz would never willingly give East Germans the one thing they wanted above all else.