The day the American boy came to East Berlin, the air was calm. The barbed wire fence on the edge of the sector looked as if it were swaying in the wind: fragile and frail, not at all the strength it was supposed to represent. Tomas Müller noticed him from the balcony of his cement apartment building. His building, and every other in East Berlin, was bland, cold, and emotionless. Ever since the end of the war, Germany was in disarray. Berlin had been separated by a thin, yet all-important, barbed-wire fence. A multitude of different countries was in control of a country that was not their own. Although Tomas was never an outspoken Nazi follower, he did what he had to do for him and his family to survive, he still wished his country would be left alone.

The boy was carrying a book in one hand, the edges of papers stuck in the pages fluttering. In the other hand, he held his brown jacket closed, looking over his shoulder as if he were paranoid. He was walking away from the checkpoint in the fence he had presumably come from as the Stasi stared at his receding back. The city was as drab and dreary as ever, the nearly identical buildings in varying shades of gray lining up along the streets like soldiers.

"Vader, what are you doing?" Tomas didn't notice Annika sidle up next to him, holding her school books in her hands. At sixteen, she still found she had trouble with certain subjects.  Her father, being an economist and businessman--for Germany before the height of the war and now for the German Democratic Republic--was always her first choice for help, especially with mathematics.

"Nothing, Liebe," he said, sighing. "I'll meet you in the kitchen."

She shrugged and left, tossing her long blonde hair over her shoulder, her blue eyes curious.

Tomas turned his attention back to the boy, but he was gone.

Inside, the Müller apartment was humble, to say the least: two bedrooms-one for the children and one for Tomas and his wife-one bathroom and one small kitchen, nothing more and nothing less. Tomas sat at the minuscule kitchen table, scanning Annika's finished and corrected work with satisfaction. In her secondary school, everything had to be perfect and everyone was treated the same, communism at its finest. "Perfect, Nika," he said with pride.

Nika smiled and opened her mouth to respond when a knock on the door echoed throughout the cold apartment. Tomas stood up immediately and carefully made his way towards the entrance. Visitors in East Berlin were not common, and there was always a chance of the Stasi waiting outside to accuse someone of being a spy for the Allies or for speaking out against the German Democratic Republic. The Stasi was always watching, and it was not uncommon for neighbors to tattle on things they had seen or heard.

Tomas reached the reverberating door and opened it carefully. Waiting outside was the boy he had seen earlier from his balcony. He had tousled brown hair and matching eyes, unlike most Germans that lived near Tomas.

"Can I help you?" Tomas asked, holding the door only slightly open with his right hand. One could never be too careful.

The boy cleared his throat. "Guten Morgen, I'm Max Weber. I'm working on my graduate thesis at the Free University of Berlin and I was looking for East Berlin economists to help me, and my research led me to you. Herr Tomas Müller, correct?"

Tomas nodded his head carefully. The boy was obviously American, and Americans were not very welcome in East Berlin anymore, at least from the rumors Tomas had heard. "What kind of research are you doing, exactly?" he asked, opening the door slightly wider and gesturing for Max to follow him inside. He sat down in a chair in the narrow hallway and offered the seat next to him to Max, who gratefully obliged. He looked tired, with dark circles under his eyes and a slow, languid way of walking.

"I'm looking at the workings of foreign trade within Communist bloc countries," Max responded, pulling out a piece of paper and a pen. "I was wondering if you could help me. My professor told me you used to work together before the war and that I should get into East Berlin now before it's too late."

"Well, you came at the right time," Tomas said, chuckling a little. "But," he continued, "this is a risky business you're doing. You have to be careful."

Max nodded, and Tomas started to discuss what he knew.

Max visited the Müller family the following days as well, learning as much as he could about the Communist economy from Tomas and being introduced to the paranoid Julia, young Annika, and little Julian. At five years old, Julian didn't know enough about what life was like before when Germany was normal. Neither did Annika for that matter. Julian would come home from school, humming a song in Russian that he had learned. Nika would open her workbooks, and Tomas would see a picture of Vladimir Lenin staring up at him from her papers as she attempted to learn the Russian language. The normal he had known from his childhood was now changed. The Soviet, Communist lifestyle had been pushed upon all, and those who resisted would be subject to questioning. Just talking to an American would not be taken entirely lightly, and suspicion would be placed on the entire family. For the following days Max had come to do his research, everything was fine. The new normal of East Berlin stayed the same. The next day, however, it had changed.

Overnight, a concrete wall had been built in place of the previous fence, topped in places with barbed wire. Tomas stood on his balcony and overheard the Stasi gibbering in German. Too many East Berliners had been escaping into the West through the fence, and the GDR government thought something else had to be done. They built a wall at least ten feet tall surrounding West Berlin to keep the East Berliners out and stop people from escaping.

"What is happening to our country?" Julia asked. Tomas started; he didn't realize she had come up next to him.

"I'm not sure," he said, "but we have to be even more careful now. No mixups."

Julia nodded and placed her hand on top of his on the balcony railing. "And what will happen to Max?"

Tomas didn't know the answer. His family had grown quite fond of the American. The children adored the fact that he was the opposite of everything they currently knew. He wasn't a Soviet, a Nazi, or an East Berliner. He was the epitome of good in their minds. The few days Max came by the Müller home, he stayed for dinner. He showed appreciation for Julia's homemade schnitzel and liked hearing about Julian and Annika's days at school, while they asked him about how his thesis was going. Max presented the many graphs and charts he had created about the Soviet economy as the children stared wide-eyed, not quite understanding what he was talking about, especially from Julian's perspective, but enthralled nonetheless. He served as a distraction for what turmoil the country was currently going through. Now that the wall was up, Tomas was worried Max might never be able to come back. "He has some family in the West, maybe he'll be alright." Tomas didn't know who he was trying to convince more: himself, or his wife.

The next week went by with no news of the Müller's American friend. Although Julian and Nika didn't say anything, Tomas could tell they were upset. They weren't used to talking to someone outside their family who wasn't trying to force any beliefs on them. Even their friends were starting to become brainwashed with Communist ideals.

At dinner that night, Nika was pushing the dinner around on her plate when Tomas heard a noise. It seemed to be coming from outside the apartment. "I'll be right back," he said to his family, who were too preoccupied with their own thoughts to even notice his absence.

He made his way over to the balcony and walked outside. There, he saw the Stasi scuffling with a man. Max. He was yelling in German at the soldiers who were holding his thesis haphazardly. They were calling him a spy, pointing at all the charts and graphs on his papers. "I'm not a spy," Max said with exasperation. "I'm a student. That's my thesis." He tried to say as much as he could to convince the soldiers that he was there for the most innocent of reasons. No matter what he said, they weren't believing him. Instead, they put his hands behind his back and started leading him down the path past the checkpoint in the wall. Max looked around wildly, and his eyes met Tomas's. Max looked as if he were about to say something, but too soon he was dragged away.

Perhaps if Tomas was alone, he would've said something. If Tomas was alone, he would've run down to stop what was happening, tell the Stasi that Max was practically a boy, in his 20s, actually working on schoolwork. But Tomas was not alone. Tomas had a family to worry about, to take care of. He couldn't let them go through questioning and the suspicion of assisting an accused spy. Tomas didn't know if Max would be alright, but he couldn't care about that. He had other things to worry about, other things that mattered in his life. That was his new normal, being on the brink of war. Tomas didn't know if Max would survive, but there was nothing he could do standing there on the balcony. Nothing had changed, life would go on, and the cycle would presumably resume again. Everything had happened so quickly. A short while ago, Tomas had never met Max, and now, he owed him nothing.

Tomas risked one more look at his American friend, struggling against the Stasi soldiers, before turning around and closing the door to the balcony for good.