But the tighter border security became around the DDR, the more ingenious people became in their escape attempts. Many got into West Berlin through the canals or by digging tunnels; lucky ones made it in the trunks of diplomats’ cars.
Entire families entrusted their lives to homemade hot air balloons and attempted to cross the border in the air by night or in fog. Others tried to cross the Baltic in rowboats or on air mattresses to reach a Scandinavian country. All of these desperate acts were considered crimes. They were called “flight from the Republic” and, if you were caught, you were punished with a long prison term. Later the regime issued orders to the border guards to shoot at all escapees. It has never been exactly determined how many escapees were killed in this way. But some people still succeeded in making their way to freedom.
Much later, after I discovered that advancement in my professional career was blocked because I refused to join the official party, I began, like many in that country, to search for something which would repay dedicated effort. I found it in Chinese watercolors and in archery.
This is the period when my story takes place. Even today, I regard it as symbolic of a person’s inability to survive if he must reject everything around him.
Perhaps so. It is better to be for something than to reject everything. The only important thing is to find that which is worth living for.
Günther Bach
Berlin 2003
The road lost itself in the snow behind the last houses. Up-slope, the wind had blown the snow over the side of the steep cut and buried the sweetbrier under an impassable snowdrift. Blue shadows lay in the only track which led up the hill to the only house standing at its top. The track then went on in a gradual curve toward the woods. The white surface was undisturbed all around the house. A high drift of loose snow blocked the threshold, and the windows looked cold and black in the clear light of day. A gust of wind drove a swirling, glistening banner of powder snow from the peak of the roof. The leafless birch twigs rustled as they rubbed together. A crow flew over the narrow strip of woods along the steep shore. A glance back over the village revealed white banners of smoke rising vertically above the roofs and then fading just above the scattered groups of trees. Further away in the background, the noon ship to Stralslund trailed a white wake behind it on the bay. And the light was cold which played across the surface of the bay.
It was the end of March, but it seemed as if winter had come back once more.
At this time of year it was hard not to attract notice in the village. During the summer, visitors arrived daily in their hundreds to wander over the hill, to crowd around the small number of cafes and bars, to buy cheap souvenirs in the stalls and souvenir shops, and to swim at the beach. You could remain unnoticed in the crowd.
But now?
The exposed position of the house meant that no one could approach it without being seen. It was impossible to get to it unobserved. Up to now, everything had seemed clear and simple. Just take the path behind the village at nightfall, go past the old smithy and between the woods and the hill, and then come back between the hedges of bearberry and seabuckthorn.
You would be out of sight of the village.
But now there was snow on the ground and it would betray every footstep. If the snow stayed on the ground, I had made the trip for nothing. Four days – a long weekend – that was all the time I had to find out what had happened.
He had disappeared perhaps at the end of September. It is possible that his absence wasn’t noticed right away.
He regularly spent four weeks of vacation abroad, mostly at the height of the season, to stay out of the way of the tourists who, partly out of curiosity and partly in a search for a place to spend the night, pestered him even on his own land. The low wire fence, which ran along the side of the road and then surrounded his place at the top, was ignored by many people who misunderstood the flagstone walk up to the house as an invitation to come in. So he often shut himself in and rarely answered knocks and shouts. If you wanted to talk to him, you had to make arrangements ahead of time.
The slope to the south ran down into a flat basin, then rose to fall gently again toward the village. The wooden posts of the targetstand stood in deep snow on the opposite slope. The lower crosspiece which supported the target barely emerged from the snow. A piece of blue plastic tarp, which had protected the target from rain, fluttered from the upper crossbar. In the low rays of the afternoon sun, the shadows, broken by a rise in the ground, also looked blue.
How long had it been? Three – no, four years. It had been a warm night in June, bright and still. It was one of those nights on the island when it didn’t seem to want to get dark, in which you get a taste of the Swedish midnight sun.
I hadn’t been able to sleep, so I had gone for a walk up the hill. There was a group of tourists standing on the road next to the house staring at the dark slope opposite. A square target with colored rings was illuminated by two flashlights in the grass. Remarkably, the target surface seemed to float above the black background of the lawn. Two men sat under the birch on the terrace next to the house.
A third man stood to one side unmoving, a bow in his hand with a glint of metal coming from the clumsy-looking middle section. The man had set the end of the bow on his left foot and was staring at the target, which seemed to be on the same level as his position. As he bent down, I saw some arrows sticking in the grass in front of him. He nocked an arrow and, facing the target, raised the bow, drawing it in a smooth motion. The light thrum of the bowstring as he shot was followed almost immediately by the dry impact of the arrow on the target. A black V-shaped shadow had appeared suddenly in the gold spot in the middle of the target. Before I realized that the two lights at the foot of the targetstand threw the shadow of the arrow shaft across the target at the same angle, the sounds of the shot and impact were repeated. Once more in the gold, a little lower, and now the shadows intersected to form a large W with its upper joint pointing into the darkness above the upper edge of the target.
The man nocked a third arrow. It seemed that his movements were always at the same pace. This arrow too landed in the illuminated golden spot, and the shadows of the three arrows now formed an angular gridwork across the gold.
The man laid the bow in the grass and went down the slope to the target. In the lamp light he seemed to be a small man rather than of middle size. Barefoot, in jeans and a dark T-shirt, he pulled the arrows out of the target without apparent effort. He bent down to the flashlights, which went out immediately, and then walked slowly back to the house, carrying the arrows in his hand. He sat down next to the two men on the terrace, who now bent over his bow, which he held across his knees. I stood next to the house, about twenty meters away and watched the men talking quietly. I couldn’t understand anything they said.
The group next to me, who, like me, had watched silently, was getting ready to leave. As they passed me, I asked, “Excuse me, do you know that man?” “The one with the bow?” I nodded. It seemed that they had seen this kind of thing often. “He makes those things here. But you can’t buy them.”
They went on. I looked back at the target. My eyes had adapted again to the diffuse lighting in which the target, now light gray, stood in front of the dark grassy slope. I had the impression