important Soviet agent. A few days later the same man from the Stasi took him to a place called Checkpoint Charlie to rehearse the coming exchange. Curious, as always, about the traditions of foreigners, Jimfish asked him about the long dividing wall he had seen from the air.
âIt is not a wall,â the Stasi officer told him. âWe never use that word. What you see is an anti-fascist protection rampart running for a hundred miles, consisting of concrete, wire mesh, trenches, fences, mines, listening devices, dogs and armed guards.â
âIs it there to keep people in or out?â Jimfish asked.
âItâs there to protect us from the subversion and aggression of those on the western side of the rampart, and thus on the wrong side of history,â came the reply. âThe guards are ordered to shoot anyone silly enough to try crossing to the other side.â
From which Jimfish concluded that anyone even glancing across the rampart was already on the wrong side of history.â
The Stasi officer agreed. âBeing wedded to the purest form of socialism, we occupy that point where history ends; we are its culmination and its apotheosis. In other words, the right side of history is us.â
Jimfish was deeply impressed and longed for the day when he would be closer to that point himself.
His cell included a small television set on which he saw, day after day, political speakers addressing large crowds in the streets. None of it did he understand, but he took it that the speakers were assuring the crowds that they were wedded to the purest form of socialism, as well as being the culmination of history. But the crowds seemed to listen less and less and took to climbing the anti-fascist protection rampart and riding on it, as if they were children and it were a nursery rocking horse instead of a concrete barrier many miles long, bristling with guards, dogs and barbed wire. Next, the climbers began chipping away at the antifascist protection rampart, using hammers and chisels, and no one came to stop them. It was all very puzzling.
At night Jimfish lay in his cell listening to chisels chinking on concrete, as if legions of steel-beaked woodpeckers were chipping to bits the anti-fascist protection barrier.Soon there were large holes everywhere and people walked through these gaps, helped by the very guards who, just days earlier, were ready to shoot anyone who did this.
Jimfishâs TV screen began showing pictures of whole families of East Germans clambering though holes in the barrier and heading into western Berlin, stopping to stare for long minutes at cakes and shoes and pickles in the bright windows of the supermarkets, or wandering down Martin-Luther Strasse, awestruck by billboards advertising âBig Sexy Landâ. If the western side of the barrier was on the wrong side of history, why did these people want to go there?
Jimfish wished he could have talked this over with his mentor Soviet Malala: surely he would have known why the world seemed so suddenly to have been stood on its head; why the barrier had great holes in it and why State Security headquarters, where he had been locked up, had gone so very quiet. It was the strangest feeling: his prison, a hubbub of clanging cell doors and shouted orders, was suddenly as silent as the grave.
C HAPTER 8
East Berlin, 1989
When Jimfish tried his cell door, it was unlocked and he wandered at will in the deserted building, lights left burning, filing cabinets open, office after office knee-deep in ribbons of shredded paper, as if someone had wanted to destroy as many files as possible. When he walked outside he was swept up in crowds chanting â Wir sind eine volk! â, which, as he spoke Afrikaans, he understood to mean âWe are one people!â But why should they insist on it? he wondered. What else could they be?
Jimfish shouldered his way through the jubilant throngs, left the deserted Stasi Headquarters and walked to
âIt is not a wall,â the Stasi officer told him. âWe never use that word. What you see is an anti-fascist protection rampart running for a hundred miles, consisting of concrete, wire mesh, trenches, fences, mines, listening devices, dogs and armed guards.â
âIs it there to keep people in or out?â Jimfish asked.
âItâs there to protect us from the subversion and aggression of those on the western side of the rampart, and thus on the wrong side of history,â came the reply. âThe guards are ordered to shoot anyone silly enough to try crossing to the other side.â
From which Jimfish concluded that anyone even glancing across the rampart was already on the wrong side of history.â
The Stasi officer agreed. âBeing wedded to the purest form of socialism, we occupy that point where history ends; we are its culmination and its apotheosis. In other words, the right side of history is us.â
Jimfish was deeply impressed and longed for the day when he would be closer to that point himself.
His cell included a small television set on which he saw, day after day, political speakers addressing large crowds in the streets. None of it did he understand, but he took it that the speakers were assuring the crowds that they were wedded to the purest form of socialism, as well as being the culmination of history. But the crowds seemed to listen less and less and took to climbing the anti-fascist protection rampart and riding on it, as if they were children and it were a nursery rocking horse instead of a concrete barrier many miles long, bristling with guards, dogs and barbed wire. Next, the climbers began chipping away at the antifascist protection rampart, using hammers and chisels, and no one came to stop them. It was all very puzzling.
At night Jimfish lay in his cell listening to chisels chinking on concrete, as if legions of steel-beaked woodpeckers were chipping to bits the anti-fascist protection barrier.Soon there were large holes everywhere and people walked through these gaps, helped by the very guards who, just days earlier, were ready to shoot anyone who did this.
Jimfishâs TV screen began showing pictures of whole families of East Germans clambering though holes in the barrier and heading into western Berlin, stopping to stare for long minutes at cakes and shoes and pickles in the bright windows of the supermarkets, or wandering down Martin-Luther Strasse, awestruck by billboards advertising âBig Sexy Landâ. If the western side of the barrier was on the wrong side of history, why did these people want to go there?
Jimfish wished he could have talked this over with his mentor Soviet Malala: surely he would have known why the world seemed so suddenly to have been stood on its head; why the barrier had great holes in it and why State Security headquarters, where he had been locked up, had gone so very quiet. It was the strangest feeling: his prison, a hubbub of clanging cell doors and shouted orders, was suddenly as silent as the grave.
C HAPTER 8
East Berlin, 1989
When Jimfish tried his cell door, it was unlocked and he wandered at will in the deserted building, lights left burning, filing cabinets open, office after office knee-deep in ribbons of shredded paper, as if someone had wanted to destroy as many files as possible. When he walked outside he was swept up in crowds chanting â Wir sind eine volk! â, which, as he spoke Afrikaans, he understood to mean âWe are one people!â But why should they insist on it? he wondered. What else could they be?
Jimfish shouldered his way through the jubilant throngs, left the deserted Stasi Headquarters and walked to