Cloud and Wallfish Read Free Page B

stretch of the border between France and Germany. In late April the Soviet army reached Berlin from the east.
    Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.
    In Soviet Russia and in the United States — and in many other places around the world — people rejoiced.
    Then things almost immediately got complicated again.
    With Germany destroyed, the U.S. and the USSR (short for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) became the world’s two great superpowers: the most powerful countries left standing. You might think that the Americans and the Soviets would get along better than they used to, now that they had won the war together, but in fact the tensions between the Soviets and the West grew and grew during the years right after the war. Russia and the United States had very different opinions about how the world should be run. The U.S. believed in capitalism, in letting people’s drive to make money push the economy forward, while the USSR was the world’s leading Communist country, supporting state ownership of factories and industries as part of a “planned economy” — which just means everything’s decided in advance by the government: how many cars and tractors to build this year; how many dentists the country will need three years from now; how many children of tractor builders, therefore, get to go to college now to study dentistry; everything. The idea was that with perfect planning, history would no longer be full of surprises, and everyone would be happy and safe.
    The other countries of the world more or less lined up behind the (Soviet) Communists or the (American) capitalists. These decisions were not always made in a very democratic fashion: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, for example, countries in the eastern part of Europe, found themselves — not by choice — on the Soviet side of the great divide. Austria and Greece fell under the influence of the Americans.
    As for occupied Germany, the superpowers eventually decided to split the country into two. In 1949 the British, French, and American occupation zones in the western parts of Germany united to form the Federal Republic of Germany, and the eastern part of the country, which had been occupied by the Soviets, took the name “German Democratic Republic” and became part of the Communist group of countries known as the East Bloc.
    That’s how that story seemed to have ended, but the two new Germanies did not exactly live happily ever after. With time that new border between them turned into a bristling line of mines and fences and watchtowers: the Iron Curtain.
    And slicing across the city of Berlin, eventually: the Wall.

Back in the car, Noah put his book in the boring blue knapsack (no indelible ink anywhere) that his parents had brought along as a replacement for Batman. It was already almost full: there was a jacket in there, too, and socks. Nothing that Noah could see in that new backpack, except for
Alice in Wonderland,
had any character whatsoever. Would somebody come along and notice that there was a perfectly good Batman backpack abandoned at the rest area? Somebody who wouldn’t mind an N. KELLER in block print near the handle? Maybe there were other Keller families on their way somewhere; maybe they would stop at that very same rest area; maybe —
    “So, Noah, the thing is,” said his father, interrupting that tangled mess of thoughts, “that there turn out to be some complicating factors.”
    You could say that again. His parents had practically kidnapped him, had crumpled his math homework and thrown away his Batman backpack — that was definitely a lot of “complicating factors.” What, in all that had just happened in the previous two hours of Noah’s life, was
not
“complicated”?
    “The age thing first,” said Noah’s mother from her confident place behind the wheel.
    “Yes,” said Noah’s father. “See, like I said, there are many rules in this place we’re off to, and one of them is that they’re very fussy