Vol 1 Prologue (2/2)

”Uh! bloody coru woken up

Katja chose to ignore the threat, however real it may have been, and finally made it to the exit She knew that only those doors were closed not with sheets of metal, but simple curtains Rules ordinarily forbade soldiers to look outside, but at this hour there would be no sentries around The faint, flickering light from theher like ait painful to breathe She looked around once again, ently pushed aside the curtain and let out a deep sigh

On the other side of the as an endless sea of white, scattered little groups of houses and trees, - and above theloomy eastern sky, barely touched by the first rays of daybreak A serene, if not uncoht

I don't knohy everything seems so familiar, even dear to me

A snow-covered field flew past, followed by a narrow railway platform with old posters of the SED[1A 1] on the walls of the so - indeed, the train had crossed the border during the night, and was now deep in East Germany

Finally I'm here

Katja took a photo out of an inside pocket of her field jacket, s:

”Noe'll ain for sure”

Her voice broke and turned into a whisper

The land before Katja's eyes was the land of war, every square metre of it drenched in the blood of the countless fallen Through leaden clouds, pregnant with snow, here and there shone rays of light, like translucent ladders by which angels furtively left this sombre domain The land of as under the spell of the cold, itself a consequence of the ith the BETA, and snowfall was now frequent in spring os in 1978 and the ensuing fall of Poland the following year, Germany had become the front line of defence for the whole of Europe, a battlefield on which the endless war of attrition went on

Translator's notes and references

Jump up↑ Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or Socialist Unity Party of Ger party of the DDR