Vous Sortez Du Secteur Americain

• Imogen Ellis, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2011

Vous Sortez Du Secteur Americain

There was a gentle falling of rain as the man came walked briskly forward. The rain puddled on the brim of his hat, eventually soaking through to make his hair wet and cold. Checkpoint Charlie was up ahead, the place of so much fear, fame and desperation that the man half-wished he had gone to Checkpoint Alpha or Beta, not the famous Checkpoint Charlie. But here he was now, walking briskly through the rain towards the checkpoint, feeling even more nervous with every hurried step he took.
Sixty paces.
Fifty paces.
Forty, his breathing became more rapid and erratic.
Thirty, his heart quickened.
Twenty paces.
Ten.
Five.
Three.
One. He swallowed, shook and felt inside his waistcoat for the papers. He stood in the line and waited.
He was meant to be here. He was MEANT to be here. HE WAS MEANT TO BE HERE.
And yet he wasn’t. The papers and exit visas were fake. But they were very good. Costing over 6000 Marks, six years of his savings and enough to bye a Trabant, a small, car. And so this was this man’s way of going over the Berlin wall. Some people tried speed and quick jumps over the wall, others tunnelled, some went so far to the ocean where they sailed, some even volunteered as guards and raced over the wall at a shift change, a few had bulldozed the wall with a tank and gone right through to the other side. You could hear the crash from there to the Reichstag.
But this man was going to go over the Berlin wall with a set of false papers and an exit visa.
The line moved forwards slowly, all but one of the five people were escorted safely over the border. One was told his papers were fake. He ran, but the communist machine guns fired and he fell onto wet concrete, where he was collected by a two man stretcher team. He would be buried at dawn tomorrow.
It was suddenly the man’s turn. He gave his papers to a guard and knew that his remote chances were gone. This guard didn’t like the man and he was looking for an excuse for him to be taken away. But the guard studied the papers and visa and looked up with a smile. “These papers are in order, you may go.” His voice was harsh and straightforward, but the guard had let him through and the man gratefully misunderstood his badge markings. “Dunker, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Next!”
And he was over the border, away from the communist sector of Germany.