ERIC WILSON

Heiko

West Berlin, August 6, 1961

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon at the Wannsee: a large inland lake that’s also a beach with bright sand brought in from the Baltic. The Wannsee offers refuge for us here in isolated West Berlin, surrounded by forbidden Soviet territory. Where else can anyone go to relax? There are no suburbs, no day trips, no excursions out of pent-up West Berlin. But there’s always the Wannsee. 

My mother didn’t want me to leave California to study in this divided city. It’s 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain, she kept telling me. What if the Russkis act up? What will you do then? 

My German friend Jonas is here with me. He’s wearing a trim German swimsuit and has persuaded me to do the same. Finally I’ve traded in my thick baggy American trunks that made me look, well, American. Jonas is reading today’s Berliner Morgenpost and shaking his head. Du, Eric, schau mal! he tells me, look at this! Yesterday over a thousand East Germans came fleeing over into the West.

And they can still do this. People living in East Berlin — as opposed to the locked-up country of East Germany — have easy access to West Berlin. Some people live in the East but can work in the West. People can cross the border to buy medicine unavailable at home. One day a young Ossi — an “Easterner” — told me he had come over to the West just to see what an orange might taste like.

Jonas shows me the front page, the banner headline. Over a thousand people came over on Friday, he reads, and another thousand came again yesterday. East Berlin is haemorrhaging people. What will they do? he asks. How long can this go on? At this point we have no idea that just a week later, on August 13, the Wall will go up. 

Jonas and I attend the Freie Universität, the “Free University.” Classes are held in the Henry Ford Bau, built by the Amis, as we Americans are fondly-pejoratively referred to. The Ford Foundation is helping Germany get back on its feet. After a full school year, it’s now my last weekend here. I don’t want to leave. I will miss Jonas. I tried, but he said he’s too big to fit into my suitcase. I will miss West Berlin. The people here are on edge, but never edgy. Persil bleibt Persil, the slogan reads. Persil detergent will still be Persil. Berlin bleibt Berlin, they say, hoping it’s true. 

Just now we hear an announcement, loud and metallic. Achtung! Achtung! It’s a woman’s voice reverberating from the loudspeaker: Ein Nackedei namens Heiko! A “naked one,” Jonas tells me, it’s a word used just to designate a bare toddler. The dictionary translates the word as “bare little scamp.” Scamp Heiko has strayed off without his swimsuit, as is sometimes the case at the Wannsee. We hear the announcement continue as we lie here on this idyllic beach. The smell of Nivea permeates the air, chalk letters on a board read LUFT 24° WASSER 21°. I know only Fahrenheit, but the weather seems perfect on a kick-back Sunday afternoon.

Just inside the lake is another sign, reading ACHTUNG! It’s the classic German warning to get your attention, heard in train stations, seen on ice-slippery sidewalks, the ubiquitous raised finger of danger. But this sign warns that West Berlin ends here and East Germany begins over there, just across the lake. ACHTUNG! East Berliners are easily able to go into West Berlin, but not those who live in East Germany, the DDR — the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. No one is allowed to leave the DDR without permission.

Over there, on the other side of the Wannsee, it’s Soviet territory. Unlike East Berlin, which is only a city, the DDR is a different country. Could it be possible for them to reach the West by swimming across the Wannsee to freedom? That can be a last hope for young people over there, in the East, who are willing to take the chance. But they’re not splashing happy and protected like bare Heiko, who is quickly sought. Rather, as soon as they hit the water they’re sought by searchlights from watchtowers, they’re tracked by border police with Kalashnikov assault rifles. If they try to turn back, they face the frenzy of attack dogs.

There is no solicitous Achtung! Achtung! Ein Nackedei! but rather a whole apparatus in place to catch Soviet Germans trying to flee, at all cost to prevent them from finding solace on a Sunday afternoon lying back on bright sand that’s been brought in from the Baltic. Sand that Jonas likes to sift through his fingers when he’s lost in thought.

Eric Wilson has appeared in the Pushcart Prize and O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies. An essay of his was listed as Notable in Best American Travel Writing 2018, and he recently received a Special Mention in the 2026 Pushcart Prize volume. His work has also appeared in New England Review, Massachusetts Review, Potomac Review, German Quarterly, and EPOCH. One of his stories was translated into Latvian and published in Rīgas Laiks.

After a Fulbright year of study in Berlin (1960–61), Eric earned a Ph.D. in German Literature from Stanford University. He taught German at UCLA and Pomona College and later taught fiction writing at UCLA Extension for 30 years.