Chapter 2 Summary

Traveling the S-Bahn into East Berlin confirms the Narrator's observations about the grayness of the East. Exiting at Friedrichstrasse, he finds it odd that a border guard focuses intently on his ear and is struck by the enthusiasm with which children celebrate a political holiday while the adults stand closed-faced. Decades earlier, he watches the scrolling headlines on the terminal's exterior as she and Lena are bound to visit her family for the first time since the Wall divides them. It is marked by falsely elevated emotions, as are all such encounters. Her nearly-blind mother and bourgeois older sister worry about life being livable in the West. Lena finds uncommon peace in the generations-old house that politics has never touched. She laughs and shares catchwords and songs. Her family treats her as one whose freedom has cost a great deal. The Narrator considers...