Midnight Hunter

Dear Heinrich Michel Daumler,

It will be painful and confusing for you to read this after three years of grief, but they told you the wrong thing. I’m not dead. It was Ana he shot that night, not me, but perhaps you know this if the scandal of our flight from East Berlin reached your ears. I’m buried far away from you, your Schätzen, where no one will ever find me. The postmark is a red herring. My husband smuggled this letter out of our country and into the West so that it could reach you. He’s very clever, my husband.

I found out what happened that night, that it was you who betrayed us. I’ve been saddened and confused about this for a very long time. I know how much you love me. I love you, too, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to write. Because I too have done something that I know you won’t be proud of. For my part, I have no regrets. Each day that passes I love my husband more and more. I love him for the life he has built for us. The child we have together. When I look at Michel (he has your curls, though they’re bright blond like his father’s hair is) I know how you must have struggled with the decision. I don’t know if I would have done the same thing. I hope I never have to find out.

Michel will be tall and handsome like his father, and very resourceful. I’m happy in this little house with the man I love and our child. It’s a life I never imagined when I lived in the shadow of the Wall. I always craved something more and you tried to give me that, but the sacrifices you made along the way weren’t yours to make.

What I’m trying to say, badly and haltingly, is that I forgive you. I wonder if you forgive me. Did you ever run into Frau Schäfer on the streets of West Berlin? She has a tale to tell, if you can get it out of her. Tell her that he’s said it’s all right that you know.

Ours was a love that bloomed in an unlikely place, in an unfathomable way. It’s been hard for him, to have a child. I’ve seen such fear in his eyes, worry that we might be taken from him, that we might get hurt or sicken and there’ll be nothing he can do to save us. But each day the fear ebbs from his eyes a little more and the nightmares have left him alone for many months now. When I tell him our family will soon get bigger I’m certain that there will be nothing but happiness in their blue depths. My heart is bursting just to think of it. When I’ve sealed

this letter and put it into his hands I’m going to tell him. It will be a girl, I think. Maybe she’ll be dark like me, and I’ll call her Adalita.

I think of you often, and even though many miles and a great political divide separate us I still love you, and I hold out hope that I will see you again. One day. If the Wall ever comes down.

Yours,

Schätzen