Glass Sculptures are sculptures of light,
as are the sculptures of our Love
Our spirits weren't quite as high the next morning when we stepped through the Iron Curtain into East Germany at Checkpoint Charlie. I had traveled through this gate in the Iron Curtain many times during the Anderson affair. It seemed to me that one never gets used to facing submachine guns and the overriding sense of the cheapness of life in the communist world that these guns signified. The tense feeling was impossible to suppress. I could close my eyes and still see the open muzzle stare into my face that I only faced once, and know what it has been made for.
As I made my way past the concrete barriers that were originally erected against tanks, the dark image behind that muzzle came to mind as on many previous occasions. It seemed that this part never gets any easier.
"What a contrasting world East Germany is!" said Sylvia once we were through.
I agreed. I couldn't help notice the contrast every time I passed into the East.
Going through the checkpoint turned out be a sobering experience for all of us: a creepy, frightening step through a gateway into a world that I had learned to loathe and yet had learned to treasure at the same time, because Steve and Ushi lived there. I felt the same feeling again this time around.
I telephoned Ushi as soon as we got to Leipzig after a two-hour drive on the autobahn. I meant to surprise her by phoning her from right outside her office. But it was mostly for security reasons that I phoned. I recalled that there was a public telephone booth in front of the great medieval castle called the Rathaus, where she worked. I knew that she could see the booth from her office window. She had mentioned it once before.
When she heard my voice she let out a shriek of delight. "Are you really here?" she asked.
"Just look out the window and watch me wave to you."
"Gosh, I can see you. Is it really you? Wave again! Why don't you come up, Pete?"
"Maybe you should come down, I have a still bigger surprise for you," I said. "Sylvia is here with me and Tony, and Heather, and Heather's future husband, Ross, a nuclear-power genius that Steve might want to meet. Except Ross has given up on science in America and became a birdwatcher for the military instead. Still he remains what he was, a genius."
"Wait please, I'll be right down," she said. "But first I must call Steve. We'll have to have lunch together."
"OK, that sounds fine, but supper is on me tonight," I warned her. "Can you recommend a place, one with dancing?"
"You bet I can!" she said and hung up.
We met her outside her place of work, right in front of the great copper-clad door of the Rathaus. The door looked as heavy as I remembered it. Its imposing size and weight provided a perfect introduction to the system that it guarded. Also, there was this contrast again, of the bombastic standing in opposition to the superlative that Ushi personified, someone delicate and beautiful. No embrace could have been warmer than ours, or a face more radiant than hers as she stepped through the giant door to greet us. She warmly embraced Sylvia, and then Heather. Afterwards she hugged Ross and Tony, too.
"Steve will meet us at Cafe Intourist," she said later. "He will come right after his last lecture."
I remembered the Cafe Intourist. I had dinner there, once. As I recalled, it was only a few blocks from the Rathaus, the right distance for walking, and of course for exchanging stories. And oh, did I have a story to tell her!
