The Wall Crossers

Wed 12 Jan - 10:00am - Anja, Margot and Jelena - Anja's perspective

While I am here just outside the guard shack at the Andrews main entrance, waiting for Corporal Felder, my mind wanders—a memory unexpectedly comes back to me.

It was one evening back in mid-December. Livie has some Army duty this evening and so we cannot be together. Instead, my school friends Margot Bendler and Jelena Rosser and I meet at a biergarten close to my flat. We choose a table inside since it is quite cold outside. But there are not so many people, so it is warm and quiet. I am glad to see my friends.

Jelena has long black hair and a refined, classically beautiful face. She is not knockout gorgeous like Margot; but there is a smoky kind of sensuousness about her. Her father, an executive at Siemens, had obtained for her a position right out of school and already she is a Supervisor of a typing pool. For a woman in a man's world, as it is, she is on a fast track to success.

The most striking thing about Jelena is her eyes. They are nearly steel gray, darkened just slightly by blue. But her look can be so scary! I can hold her gaze, but most people cannot! She is perhaps two inches taller than my five seven, and though tall and schlaksig (lanky), she has a hidden power in her body that she has had since we were thirteen, and I would not want to be ill-regarded by Jelena! She can be soft soft-spoken and uplifting at will, and yet there is an underlying hardened core of determination to win at all times.

I remember a time when we were age sixteen at school—that girl who crossed her. Jelena pushed her against a locker so hard it broke the girl's wrist. We all sided with Jelena—told the school officials the other girl was at fault—started the troubles. But I knew there was a side to my friend... a side that could become dangerous in short order.

However, she is always fair and considerate of me, even protective, though never affectionate, and certainly I would not say overly loving.

She had lost her only sister in an auto crash, when they were quite young—before I knew her. That is why her Father acquainted her with all her heart's desires, I think. That is why she felt the need to watch over me.

Today she has a diamond on her right hand, a pearl necklace that is beautiful, hair swept back and held with pearl-studded barrettes, and a sheer light cream-colored dreamy dress with crinkled georgette fabric and ruffles—a very feminine flair handkerchief hem dress—and of course black high heel pumps. Like she is going out to a major ball, rather than merely to meet her girls friends!

Margot is stunning as always from natural beauty. She has come from work and so wears proper business office attire for junior staff, as do I: white button-up collared shirt under an A-line pinafore dress (mine dark-gray, Margot's is beige) hem an inch below the knee, and black low block-heel slingback pumps and the latest Lerner pantyhose that all of us working girls have begun to wear.

One thing we all agree on: we each wear the latest Bulova Accutron ladies watch!

We are so comfortable together—the result of long friendship. I watch them talk and feel joy, to be so understood and have such rich history together as we do. I am the one with crazy ideas! Margot with penetrating insight into the world. Jelena refined, surely at ease as equals with princesses or giants of industry.

Margot changes men like sweaters... I cannot keep up with her choices! Jelena moves in a stratospheric Clique, beyond the reach of Margot and me, and those men are fired with ambition so that we wonder—is there any love in men such as these?

And as for me? I have a distant lover whom I can never touch, and a close-by girlfriend who seems to adore our time together, more than just in friendship, yet fearing upsetting my plans so long in place? I wonder: what if I were to tell Livie, "Ich liebe dich (I love you)." What would happen? Would she run away? Kiss me, finally? We have, at times, been so physically close we might as well have just given in to partake of love's greatest thrills! Who would care? Not Horst. Jelena? Hmmm, maybe Yes. Margot? She would encourage me! Would I like that? I trust Livie. She cares about me. We have adventure, touched with the assurance of mutual trust.