So...
This took forever. APOLOGIES.
Excuse: February can kiss my ass. Honestly. It sounds so nice and lovely but really it's global warming and plague and this is the first time I've seen the sun in weeks! and let's binge watch anime Month. And GW's birthday. George Washington's favorite food was cherries. I'm not really sure how my sister knew that, but she's fanatic about good ol' GW. I don't like cherries. Partial to maple syrup and whipped cream. But cherries? I like asparagus better than cherries.
And, research is an endless field of would this work or not gosh whats a reputable website that will give me info on Berlin wall okay okay hey history teacher what's the Berlin wall like oh, what do I need info for? Oh, nothing, just a normal Saturday night...
In short, sorry this came so late, and happy President's Day to all you Americans!
GILBERT POV finally:
Gilbert Beilschmidt had had no reason to believe that God had some bone to pick with him.
He had life good. He really did. House? Check. Food? Check. Job? Check. Health? Check. Ludwig, his little brother? Checkity-Check-Check-Check.
And then God gave him a whap on the side of the head and laughed, "Fuck you. Fuck you in particular."
He'd been returning home from work after a late night. Normal. It was Sunday, sure, and it was one of those Christian rules or whatever that you really weren't supposed to work. Sunday was special, blah blah, day of rest, blah blah. It would probably have meant more to him if he was (one) living in biblical times, (two) was devout enough to act as if he was in biblical times, and (three) had actually read an acceptable portion of the Bible. There was probably one lying in the house somewhere, but he couldn't be that sure. He went to church with Ludwig, and then sent his brother to Sunday school so he'd be able to vouch for him when Jesus looked at Gilbert all disappointed like and asked what the hell he thought he was doing in his life. He didn't do Bible stories. He did Grimm stories. Same thing.
He was thinking of which one to tell Ludwig that night. 'The Valiant Little Tailor'? 'Clever Else'? 'King Thrushbeard'?
He had narrowed it down between 'The Valiant Little Tailor' and 'King Thrushbeard' when there was a ringing shout of, "Halt!"
And suddenly there was a wall of barbed wire that had not been there that morning.
And suddenly he was trapped.
He had wandered through the streets in a daze. Didn't come to work the next morning and the morning after that, half because he was processing what had happened and half in retaliation. He had no place to go, so he slept on benches like a beggar. He had a few Deutsche Mark in his pocket. They were worth a lot more here than back over there, but he hadn't made a move to touch them until his third day, when he had finally succumbed to hunger.
He was itching to use some of the remaining to drown himself in pilsner.
He began to have the oddest dreams, too. They used to be the broken, impossible dreams, like giant turkeys racing after him, being eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Ludwig transforming into a moose. Now they were even more broken and impossible, which made them more terrible than fantastical. They came in one long drag or multiple flashes: he had to travel the entire world one night, go through skulls shattering and dead birds singing another. There were tools too heavy to pick up, people screaming, time stopping, earthquakes, floods, violent storms, sinking ships...Each time he shook sleep off, he was frozen in the dark, eyes wide and staring at the sky.
He got up off the bench and shook his head. The sky was bright now, and he had to blink the dark blotches out of his eyes when he stood up and started walking aimlessly around the foreign half of Berlin.
He avoided looking at the wall as much as possible, but his feet always had other ideas and he always ended up facing it. The Soviets were building it up alright. It was about as tall as him, an ugly combination of gray blocks and dark barbed wire. There was, in essence, so means of escape.
There were no soldiers in his line of sight, though that didn't mean they weren't around, which was why at first he dismissed the ringing shout.
He heard another time and starting walking again, only to have the shout grow louder, clearer.
"Gilbert!"
He bit the inside of his cheek. Man, that pilsner and a smoke. He was aching for some.
"Gilbert!"
He shook his head.
"Fatöku lepkevadász!"
Goddamn Hungarian woman, yelling things he didn't understand -
Oh.
Goddamn Hungarian woman Elizabeta.
And so he raced. Fuck the Soviets.
The first thing he saw as he leapt over the curb to the other side of the road was a blonde head pointed out over the wall, just a little bit away from him.
"Gilbert!"
"Ludwig!" he gasped.
His brother's head whipped around. Gilbert nearly went crashing into the wall.
"It took you long enough" was all his brother said. His face was a little pale, and his eyes a little shiny, but he looked okay. He was okay.
Gilbert reached his hand up and grabbed his outstretched arm. "You yell like a girl."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Elizabeta said from the other side of the wall. She jumped, and Gilbert caught just a millisecond of her flying brown hair. "Basszal meg egy egyszarvut."
By God, he'd never thought being cursed at would be a symphony to his ears.
"Whatever you wanna think," he replied. "You're not a girl."
He heard a disgruntled cough. "You have no sense of manners, do you, Gilbert?"
"Sissy - I mean Roderich?"
"It's him," Ludwig answered. He appeared to be sitting on his shoulders. "What are you doing over here?"
"Oh, you know, just a normal, pleasant vacation on the beach."
His brother didn't say anything to that, just gave him a black look. He was like a tiny Opa - always managed to look like someone had just ran over his dog.
"What do you think I'm doing over here?" Gilbert sighed.
"That's why I asked."
"You're looking over a wall, in case you didn't notice."
"No, I didn't dismiss that note."
They stared at each other, dark maroon eyes against bright blue.
Gilbert broke it first, shaking his head. "Where are you staying? Not by yourself, right?"
"Ludwig's been staying with us," he heard Elizabeta answer. "Don't worry about it."
"Shit," he said in response. "Don't worry, Ludwig, I'll be back home in no time. Then you can get out of that hellhole."
"Hellhole?" Roderich spat.
"Yeah. He probably hasn't gotten a wink of sleep with you playing your damned piano all night. All of Berlin can probably hear it. It's - what's the sissy translation? - highly offensive to the ears."
"I am a professional musician, thank you very much -"
"All the more you should get back over here," Elizabeta interrupted, "before your brother's eardrums melt because of Debussy's 'Clair de Lune'."
He'd let Roderich play the violin in his ears every night if he could get back over to the West. "I can't."
"You don't belong in the East," Ludwig snapped. "Stop being difficult. You aren't Prussian."
"I'd settle to be English, Ludwig. I can't get back over. I'm trapped. I'm Eastern, now."
"Well, you've got an identity card for the Federal Republic of Germany."
"Don't you think I would have used it by now?"
"That's what I'm trying to understand."
Gilbert swore. "I don't have my identity card anymore, alright? It was forged. It was a fake. Something was wrong with it, I don't know."
"Fake?" Ludwig repeated. "But -"
"Yours is all right," he assured him.
"But I need to know why yours wasn't. I'm a little less stuck than you are, at the moment."
"I didn't know mine was forged! It wasn't. At least, I don't think it was."
"How could you not know if your card was a fake?"
"Because there was never a wall up that made anybody say so, that's why! It's not really the card, see."
"Well, the sooner you spit it out, the sooner we fix this mess," Elizabeta bit. "Get on with it."
"I'm an engineer."
Ludwig gave him a quizzical look. "I know."
"No, no, you know but you don't understand. That's why they put the wall up. They want to keep people in. Think about Mutti, Ludwig. Why do you think Vati took her to the West, and not let her stay? I work in a factory that ships out equipment for the Soviet Union - I might have a Western identity card, but the Soviets aren't so ready to let me go yet."
"Halt!"
He'd immediately flipped out his card and handed it over.
The soldier perused it, mouth twitching, and then put it in his pocket. "Turn around."
"What?"
"This is forged."
"The hell it is -"
"Turn around."
And that was the first time he witnessed the beginning of the wall.
"They can't get away with that," Elizabeta spat.
"No one's challenging them."
Ludwig studied him. "You're not actually expecting for this to last, are you?"
"Me? Stay here? I think Elizabeta can only handle so many of your dirty socks," he responded back with a snort.
"But you'll get back."
"No doubt about it." He said things with a lot more confidence than he felt.
I didn't mention it above, but thanks so much for all the reviews, favorites, and follows :D They mean a lot!
"Fatöku lepkevadász!" - I got to be completely honest here, I have no idea. I wrote this a while ago. "Fuck you, butterfly hunter", maybe? (Perfect-exaaple-of-why-you-shouldn't-look-up-languages-on-the-internet Hungarian).
"Basszal meg egy egyszarvut." - "Go fuck a unicorn". (Hungarian.) This is my favorite I want to know the exact way to pronounce this.
Also, sorry English people for the whole 'I'd settle for being English' thing, but you're the original America :( But I love you, no offense to any of you peeps, you guys doled out Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Charlotte Brontë and educated my main man OSCAR WILDE. No harm done?
Sorry, sorry!
Let me know what you all think, please!
Is 'surf' the shortened form of 'surface', do you think? And is 'suggest' really pronounced 'sug-jest'? I say it like 'suh-jest' and my friend looked at me and made me repeat myself three times. It would make sense, though, considering that the eye doctor said I don't blink right and that I brush my teeth with a Star Wars light-saber tooth brush with a timer and sounds but I've never seen Star Wars, never ever. Not a single one.