Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(18)

“Cohnnnne!”

“Ja! Gut!”

Lena took her hand away. In its absence, Jenny’s skin felt naked.

“How long does it take to get really good at German?” Jenny asked.

“The more you are in it, the better you get.”

“How did you learn English?”

Lena paused. “I lived in London for two years. With some cousins.”

“Oh,” Jenny said. She didn’t know what to say. Had Lena’s parents died? “When did you come back to Berlin?”

“When I was thirteen. I ran away.”

“Why?”

“They never felt like family. And I hated London. So. One night, I grab my rucksack and I take the train here. I met Rat first. He was living in another squat. We moved around till we came to this one.”

“How did you learn to be so brave?”

“I had to be,” Lena said, as if it were that simple.

On Oranienstrasse, Lena showed Jenny the famous punk club, SO36. Even at this hour vampiric clubbers emerged from its dark depths, blinking into the daylight with kohl-smeared eyes as if surprised and a bit offended to find that it was midafternoon. Jenny raised her camera and caught an intimate laugh shared between two wild-haired boys with their arms around each other’s slender waists, their hands shoved deep into each other’s back pockets.

“This is der coolste club in all of Berlin,” Lena announced. It didn’t look like much, just a storefront closed off by an iron gate with music flyers plastered over the front. “Everybody important plays here. Sophie Scholl will play there one day,” Lena said like it was already fact, and Jenny wondered what it would be like to have that much confidence.

Jenny had “promise and talent,” her teacher, Mr. Simpson, had said—but her nerves always got the better of her. When it came time to perform, she’d freeze up and make stupid mistakes. Nerves had kept her from making first chair. She’d known the piece backward and forward, but alone under the lights, her mind had erased every note. It was only because Mr. Simpson knew that she could play that she’d gotten second chair.

“Take my picture, eh?” Lena pressed her back to the club windows and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Got it,” Jenny said.

Lena burst into an irresistible grin. “Next time it will be from the stage!”

The S-Bahn rattled along the elevated tracks, making its own punk racket.

“You want to see a ghost station?” Lena asked.



* * *



Lena and Jenny waited on the U-Bahn platform. The day had gone gray with smog and a pressing humidity. Jenny’s pink Izod clung to her stomach rolls. Lena had refused to explain what ghost stations—“Geisterbahnh?fe”—were. Jenny imagined the haunted houses she and her friends sometimes went to at Halloween. They sat by the train window peering out at the light-dissected underground. Lena was uncharacteristically quiet. There was only the rattle of the train and the soft mechanical hiss of its doors as it let people on and off. As the next stop approached, a conductor’s voice crackled over a loudspeaker: “Letzte Station in Westberlin!” Last station in West Berlin.

“Where exactly does this train go?” Jenny asked, apprehensive.

People were picking up their briefcases and handbags and trundling off. Lena did not move.

“Like, does it just go back now or…?”

The doors slid shut, sealing them inside. Jenny felt a sharp surge of dread.

“Now we see the ghosts,” Lena said.

The train crept forward in the tunnel like a secret, slowing to a crawl as it approached the next station. Most of the stations Jenny had seen were thronged with people. This one appeared to be deserted. She could see the outline of the station’s exits but they were now completely bricked over. Jenny strained forward to read the station name. Potsdamer Platz.

East Berlin. They were behind the Iron Curtain, inside the GDR.

“When they split us into East and West, they didn’t know what to do about the trains,” Lena said at last. “Some trains would have to pass for a short time through East Berlin in the Mitte, the city center. There was no way around it. But if the trains stop here, how could they keep the Ossis from boarding the train and leaving the GDR? So they decided: The trains could pass through but they could not stop. They bricked it up. Gated them off. Made them dead. Geisterbahnh?fe.”

Jenny stared out the window at the eerie underworld gloom. A pair of rifle-toting East German guards patrolled the platform, menacing phantoms washed bone-bright by the cold, dim lights. Jenny imagined them boarding the train, demanding to see her papers, dragging her away to some dank interrogation room.

“That one watches the train and the other guards.” Lena nodded to a concrete bunker at the far end where two eyes peered out through a rectangular window. Jenny couldn’t tell if the eyes showed suspicion or boredom. It didn’t matter. The effect was the same—she felt unsettled. As if she might disappear and never be heard from again.

Something scraped the sides of the train. “That is so no one can try to get to West Berlin by hanging off the side of the train.” Lena smooshed her hands together and made a splat noise.

“What if they jumped onto the tracks?”

“Even if they did, they’d never make it through the tunnels. There are barriers and secret alarms. But most likely, the guards would shoot you before you got too far. They make sure nobody can escape. Bastards.”