Gunther refused the job, agreeing, ironically, with Shaeffer.
“It would never work. He’s careful. And you know, this is not police work. This is-”
“I know what it is. I didn’t realize you were so choosy.”
“A question more of resources,” Gunther said blandly.
“We know he met Tally,” Jake said.
“So Vassily’s the paymaster, but who else did Tully meet? Not Herr Brandt, I think. With an American bullet.”
“The one leads to the other. And Sikorsky knows where Emil is.”
“Evidently. But you keep confusing the cases. Who is it exactly you wish to find, Herr Brandt or the man who killed Tully?”
“Both.”
Gunther looked at him. “Sikorsky won’t lead us to Herr Brandt, but he may lead us to the other. If he doesn’t suspect we know. You see, it’s a question of resources.”
“So what do you intend to do, just leave Emil with the Russians?”
Gunther shrugged. “My friend, I don’t care who makes the rockets. We already made ours. You can see with what results.” He got up from his chair to pour more coffee. “For now, let’s just solve our case. Herr Brandt, I’m afraid, will have to wait.”
“He can’t wait,” Jake said, frustrated.
Gunther looked over the edge of his cup. “Then read the files.”
“I read the files.”
“Read again. They’re complete?”
“Everything he handed over.”
“Then it must be there-what Vassily wants. You see, it’s the interesting point. Why did Tully have to die at all? The deal was a success. Vassily got what he wanted, Tully got paid. A success. So why? Unless it wasn’t finished. There must be something else Vassily wants.”
“Besides Lena.”
Gunther shook his head, dismissing this. “Herr Brandt wants her. Vassily is just the good host. No, something else. In the files. Why else would Tully read them? So go read.” He wriggled his fingers, a schoolmaster shooing Jake away.
Jake checked his watch. “All right. Later. First I have to do some work.”
“The journalist. More black market?”
Jake glanced up, sorry now that he had mentioned it. “No. Actually, Renate. An interview.”
“Ah,” Gunther said, walking back to the chair with his cup, avoiding it. “By the way,” he said, sitting down, “did you check the motor pool?”
“No, I assumed Sikorsky drove-”
“All the way to Zehlendorf? Well, maybe so. But I like to be neat. Cross the t’s.”
“Okay. Later.”
Gunther picked up the cup, half hiding his face. “Herr Geismar? Ask her something for me.” Jake waited. “Ask her how it felt.”
At the detention center near the Alex he was shown into a small room as plain as the makeshift court-a single table, two chairs, a picture of Stalin. The escort, with elaborate courtesy, offered coffee and then left him alone to wait. Nothing to look at but the ceiling fixture, a frosted glass bowl that might once have been lighted with gas, a Wilhelmine leftover. Renate was led in through the opposite door by two guards, who left her at the table and positioned themselves against the wall, still as sconces.
“Hello, Jake,” she said, her smile so tentative that her face seemed not to move at all. The same pale gray smock and roughly cut hair.
“Renate.”
“Give me a cigarette-they’ll think you have permission,” she said in English, sitting down.
“You want to do this in English?”
“Some, so they won’t suspect anything. One of them speaks German. Thank you,” she said, switching now to German as she took the light and inhaled. “My god, it’s better than food. You never lose your taste for it. I’m not allowed to smoke, back there. Where is your notebook?”
“I don’t need one,” Jake said, confused. Suspect what?
“No, please, I want you to write things down. You have it?”
He pulled the pad out of his pocket, noticing for the first time that her hand was trembling, nervous under the sure voice. The cigarette shook a little as she lowered it to the ashtray.
He busied himself with his pen, at a loss. Ask her how it felt, Gunther said, but what could she possibly say? A hundred nods, watching people being bundled into cars.
“It’s so difficult to look at me?”
Reluctantly he raised his head and met her eyes, still familiar under the jagged hair.
“I don’t know how to talk to you,” he said simply.
She nodded. “The worst person in the world. I know-that’s what you see. Worse than anybody.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you don’t look, either. Worse than anybody. How could she do those things? That’s the first question?”
“If you like.”
“Do you know the answer? She didn’t-somebody else did. In here.” She tapped her chest. “Two people. One is the monster. The other is the same person you used to know. The same. Look at that one. Can you do that? Just for now. They don’t even know she exists,” she said, tilting her head slightly toward the guards. “But you do.”
Jake said nothing, waiting.
“Write something, please. We don’t have much time.” Another jerky pull on the cigarette, anxious.
“Why did you ask to see me?”
“Because you know me. Not this other person. You remember those days?” She looked up from the ashtray. “You wanted to sleep with me once. Yes, don’t deny it. And you know, I would have said yes. In those days, the Americans, they were all glamorous to us. Like people in the films. Everyone wanted to go there. I would have said yes. Isn’t it funny, how things turn out.”
Jake looked at her, appalled; her voice was wavering like her hand, edgy and intimate at the same time, the desperate energy of a crazy person.
He glanced down at the notebook, anchoring himself. “Is that what you want? To talk about old times?”
“Yes, a little,” she said in English. “Please. It’s important for them.” Her eyes moved to the guards again, then fixed back on him, steady, not crazy. A girl getting away with something. “So,” she said in her German voice, “what happened to everybody? Do you know?”
When he didn’t answer, still disconcerted, she reached over to touch his hand. “Tell me.”
“Hal went back to the States,” he began, confused, watching her. “At least, he was on his way the last time I saw him.” She nodded, encouraging him to go on. “Remember Hannelore? She’s here, in Berlin. I saw her. Thinner. She kept his flat.” The small talk of catching up. What did the guards make of it, standing under Stalin?
Renate nodded, taking another cigarette. “They were lovers.”
“So she said. I never knew.”
“Well, I was a better reporter.”
“The best,” he said, smiling a little, involuntarily drawn back with her. “Nothing escaped you.” He stopped, embarrassed, in the room again.
“No. It’s a talent,” she said, looking away. “And you? What happened to you?”
“I write for magazines.”
“No more radio. And your voice was so good.”
“Renate, we need to-”
“And Lena?” she said, ignoring him. “She’s alive?”
Jake nodded. “She’s here. With me.”
Her face softened. “I’m happy for you. So many years. She left the husband?”
“She will, when they find him. He’s missing.”
“When who finds him?”
“The Americans want him to work for them-a scientist. He’s a valuable piece of property.”
“Is he?” she said to herself, intrigued by this. “And always so quiet. How things turn out.” She looked back at him. “So they’re all still alive.”
“Well, I haven’t heard from Nanny Wendt.”
“Nanny Wendt,” she said, her voice distant, in a kind of reverie. “I used to think about all of you. From that time. You know, I was happy. I loved the work. You did that for me. No German would do that, not then. Even off the books. I wondered, sometimes, why you did. Not even Jewish. You could have been arrested.”
“Maybe I was too dumb to know any better.”
“When I saw you in the court-” She lowered her head, her voice trailing off. “Now he knows too, I thought. Now he’ll only see her.” She tapped the right side of her chest. “The greifer.”
“But you still asked to see me.”
“There’s no one else. You helped me once. You remember who was.
Jake shifted in his chair, awkward. “Renate, I can’t help you. I have nothing to do with the court.”
“Oh that,” she said, waving her cigarette. “No, not that. They’ll hang me, I know it. I’m going to die,” she said easily.
“They’re not going to hang you.”
“It’s so different? They’ll send me east. No one comes back from the east. Always the east. First the Nazis, now them. No one comes back. I used to see them go. I know.”
“You said you didn’t know.”
“I knew,” she said, pointing again, then to the other side. “She didn’t. She didn’t want to know. How else to do it? Every week, more faces. How could you do it if you knew? After a while she could do anything. No tears. A job. It’s all true, what they said in there. The shoes, the Cafe Heil, all of it. And the work camps, she thought that. How else could she do it? That’s what happened to her.”
Jake looked up, nodding to her real side. “And what happened to her?”
“Yes,” she said wearily, “you came for that. Go ahead, write.” She sat up, darting her eyes sideways to the guards. “Where shall we start? After you left? The visa never came. Twenty-six marks. A birth certificate, four passport pictures, and twenty-six marks. That’s all. Except somebody had to take you, and there were too many Jews already. Even with my English. I can still speak it. You see?” she said, switching. “Not a bad accent. Speak for a while-they’ll think I’m showing off for you. So they’ll be used to it.”
“The accent’s fine,” Jake said, still confused but meeting her gaze, “but I’m not sure I understand everything you’re saying.”
“Any change of expression from them?” she said.
“No.”
“So I stayed in Berlin,” she said in German. “And of course things got worse. The stars. The special benches in the park. You know all that. Then the Jews had to work in factories. I was in Siemenstadt. My mother too, an old woman. She could barely stand at the end of the day. Still, we were alive. Then the roundups started. Our names were there. I knew what it would mean-how could she live? So we went underground.”
“U-boats?”
“Yes, that’s how I knew, you see. How it was, what they would do. All their tricks. The shoes-no one else thought of that. So clever, they told me. But I knew. I had the same problem, so I knew they would go there. And of course they did.”
“But you didn’t stay underground.”
“No, they caught me.”
“How?”
She smiled to herself, a grimace. “A greifer. A boy I used to know. He always liked me. I wouldn’t go with him-a Jew. I never thought of myself as Jewish, you see. I was-what? German. To think of that now. An idiot. But there he was, in the cafe, and I knew he must be underground, too, by that time. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. Do you know what that’s like, not to talk? You get hungry for it, like food. And I knew he liked me and I thought maybe he would help me. Anyone who could help-”
“And did he?”
She shrugged. “To the Gestapo car. They took me in and beat me. Not so bad, not like some of the others, but enough. So I knew I wasn’t German anymore. And the next time would be worse. They wanted to know where my mother was. I didn’t tell them, but I knew I would the next time. And then he did help. He had friends there- friends, the devils he worked for. He said he could make a bargain for me. I could work with him and they’d keep us off the list, my mother too. If I went with him. After this? I said. And you know what he said to me? Tt’s never too late to make a bargain in this life. Only in the next.‘” She paused. “So I went with him. That was the bargain. He got me and I kept my life. The first time I was sent out, we went together. His pupil. But I was the one who spotted the woman that day. I knew the look, you see. And after the first time-well, what does it matter how many, it’s just the first one, over and over.” “What happened to him?”
“He was deported. When he was with me, it was all right for him. We were a team. But then they split us up, and on his own he was not so successful. I was the one, I had the eye. He had nothing to bargain anymore. So.” She squashed out the cigarette. “But you did,” Jake said, watching her.
“Well, I was better at it. And Becker liked me. I kept my looks. You see here?” She pointed to her left cheek, folded up near the edge of her eye. “Only this. When they beat me, my face was swollen, but it went down. Only this. And Becker liked that. It reminded him, maybe. I don’t know of what.” She looked away, finally distressed. “Oh my god, how can we talk this way? How can I describe what it was like? What difference does it make? Write anything you want. It can’t be worse. You think I’m making excuses. It was David, it was Becker. Yes, and it was me. I thought I could do this, that we could talk, but when I talk about it-look at your face-you see her. The one who killed her own. That’s what they want for the magazines.” “I’m just trying to understand it.”
“Understand it? You want to understand what happened in Germany? How can you understand a nightmare? How could I do it? How could they do it? You wake up, you still can’t explain it. You begin to think maybe it never happened at all. How could it? That’s why they have to get rid of me. No evidence, no greifer, it never happened.”
She was shaking her head and looking away, her eyes beginning to fill.
“Now look. I thought I was finished with that, no tears. Not like my mother. She cried enough for both. ‘How can you do this?’ Well, it was easy for her. I had to do the work, not her. Every time I looked at her, tears. You know when they stopped? When she got in the truck Absolutely dry. I thought, she’s relieved not to have to live this way anymore. To see me.”
Jake took a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her. “She didn’t think that.”
Renate blew her nose, still shaking her head. “No, she did. But what could I do? Oh, stop,” she said to herself, wiping her face. “I didn’t want to do this, not in front of you. I wanted you to see the old Renate, so you would help.”
Jake put down the pen. “Renate,” he said quietly, “you know it won’t make any difference what I write. It’s a Soviet court. It doesn’t matter to them.”
“No, not that. I need your help. Please.” She reached for his hand again. “You’re the last chance. It’s finished for me. Then I saw you in the court and I thought, not yet, not yet, there’s one more chance. He’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“Oh, look at this,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I knew if I started-” She turned to the guards, and for an instant it occurred to Jake that she was playing, the tears part of some larger performance.
“Do what?” he said again.
“Please,” she said to the guard, “would you bring me some water?”
The guard on the right, the German speaker, nodded, said something in Russian to the other, and left the room.
“Write this down,” she said to Jake in English, her voice low, as if it were coming from the back of a sob. “Wortherstrasse, in Prenzlauer, the third building down from the square. On the left, toward Schonhauserallee. An old Berliner building, the second courtyard. Frau Metzger.”
“What is this, Renate?”
“Write it, please. There’s not much time. You remember in court I told you I didn’t do it for myself?”
“Yes, I know. Your mother.”
“No.” She looked at him, her eyes sharp and dry. “I have a child.”
Jake’s pen stopped. “A child?”
“Write it. Metzger. She doesn’t know about me. She thinks I work in a factory. I pay her. But the money runs out this month. She won’t keep him now.”
“Renate-”
“Please. His name is Erich. A German name-he’s a German child, you understand? I never had it done. You know, down there.” She pointed to her groin, suddenly shy.
“Circumcised.”
“Yes. He’s a German child. No one knows. Only you. Not the magazines either, promise me? Only you.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Take him. Prenzlauer’s in the east. She’ll give him up to the Russians. You must take him-there’s no one else. Jake, if you were ever fond of me at all-”
“Are you crazy?”
“Yes, crazy. Do you think after everything else I’ve done, I couldn’t ask this? Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Then you don’t know. You can do anything for a child. Even this,” she said, spreading her hand to the room, the greifers life. “Even this. Was I right to do it? Ask God, I don’t know. But he’s alive. I saved him, with their money. They gave me pocket money, you know, for the cafes, for-” She stopped. “Every pfennig was for him. I thought, you’re paying to keep a Jew alive. At least one of us is going to live. That’s why I had to stay alive, not for me. But now-”
“Renate, I can’t take a child.”
“Yes, please. Please. There’s no one else. You were decent, always. Do this for him, if not the mother, what you think of her. Everything I did-one more day, one more day alive. How can I give up now? If you take him to America, they can hang me, at least I’ll know I got him out. Safe. Out of this place.” She grabbed his hand again. “He’d never know what his mother did. To live with that. He’d never know.” “Renate, how could I take a child to America?” “The west, then, anywhere but here. You could find a place for him-I trust you, I know you’d make it all right, decent people. Not some Russian camp.”
“What do I tell him?”
“That his mother died in the war. He’s so young, he won’t remember. Just some woman who used to come sometimes. You can tell him you used to know her when she was a girl, but she died in the war. She did,” she said, looking down. “It’s not a lie.”
Jake looked at the blotchy face, the sharp eyes finally dulled by a sadness so oppressive that he felt his own shoulders sinking. Always something worse. He nodded his head toward the side she thought was real.
“She didn’t,” he said.
Her face was confused for a second, then cleared, almost in a smile. “That’s only for today. So I could ask you. After this, there’s only her,” she said, putting her finger on the other side. “It’s over.”
“It doesn’t have to be. At least let me talk to the lawyers.”
“Oh, Jake, to say what? You were there, you saw them. What would mercy be-a Russian prison? Who survives that?”
“People do.”
“To come back as what? An old woman, back to Germany? And meanwhile, what happens to Erich? No, it’s over. If you want to help me, save my child. Ah, the water,” she said, fluttering a little as the guard came through the door with a glass and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said in German, “it’s very kind.” As she drank, the guard looked at the other guard with an “anything happen?” expression, answered by a shrug.
“So you’ll help?” Renate said.
“Renate, you can’t ask me to do this. I’m sorry, but I don’t-”
“In English now,” she said, switching. “I’m not asking you, I’m begging you.”
“What about his father?”
“Dead. When we were underground. One night he didn’t come back, that’s all. So I knew. I had the baby myself.” She handed back the handkerchief. “You be the father.”
“Stop. I can’t do that.”
“He’ll die,” she said, her eyes fixed on his. “Now, when it’s over, after everything.”
Jake turned his head, taking in the guards, Stalin’s flat iconic gaze. “Look,” he said finally, “I know a church. They work with children, orphans, try to place them. I can talk to the pastor, he’s a good man, maybe there’s something he-”
“They find homes? In the west? With Christians?”
“Well, yes, they would be. I’ll ask. Maybe he knows a Jewish family.”
“No. A German boy. So he’ll be safe next time.”
“You want him to be German?” Jake said, amazed. The endless, twisted cord.
“I want him to live. Americans-how can you know? How people are here. But promise me, a home, not some camp.”
“I can’t promise that, Renate. I don’t know. I’ll talk to the pastor. I’ll do what I can. I’ll try.”
“But you’ll move him from Frau Metzger? Before she gives him up?
“Renate, I can’t promise-”
“Yes, promise me. Lie to me. My god, can’t you see I have to tell myself this? I have to think it’s going to be all right.”
“I won’t lie to you. I’ll do what I can. You’ll have to be satisfied with that.”
“Because I have nothing to bargain with, you mean. Finally, no more Jews.”
Jake looked away. Every week a new list, trading yourself, until there was no other way to live. He had become one of her bosses.
“What do they say about the trial?” he said, moving somewhere else.
“My lawyers?” she said, a trace of scorn. “To be clever, play the innocent-that I couldn’t help what I was doing. To be sorry.”
“Well?”
“It’s not enough to be sorry. It’s not enough for me. I can’t make it go away. I still see the faces, how they looked at me. I can’t make them go away.”
“One minute,” the guard shouted out in German.
Renate drew a cigarette from the pack. “One more,” she said in English, “for the road. That’s right, isn’t it? For the road?”
“Yes. I’ll come back.”
“No. They won’t allow that. Only this once. But I’m so glad to see you. Someone from that world. In Berlin again, I never thought-” She stopped, grabbing his hand. “Wait a minute. I can’t bargain with it, but maybe it’s something, if he’s still there. Promise me.”
“Renate, don’t do this.”
“You said they were looking for him, the Americans. So maybe it’s something for you. Lena’s husband-I know where he is. I saw him.”
Jake looked up, stunned. “Where?”
“Promise me,” she said steadily, still covering his hand. “One last bargain.”
He nodded. “Where?”
“Can I believe you?”
“Where?”
“As if I have a choice,” she said.
“Time,” the guard called.
“One minute.” She turned back to Jake, conspiratorial, talking quickly. “Burgstrasse, the old Gestapo building. Number Twenty-six. It was bombed, you know, but they still use part. They kept me there before here.”
“And you saw him there?”
“Out the window, across the courtyard. He didn’t see me. I thought, my god, that’s Emil, why do they have him here? Is he on trial too? Is he?”
“No. What was he doing?”
“Just looking down into the courtyard. Then the lights went out. That’s all. Is that something for you? Can you use that?”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“Of course. My eyes are good, you know, always.”
The guard approached the table.
“Give him some cigarettes,” she said in English, standing. “They’ll be nice to me.”
Jake got up and offered the pack.
“So it’s good?” she said. “One last job for you?”
Jake nodded. “Yes.”
“Then promise me.”
“All right.”
She smiled, then her face twitched, the skin falling slack, as if she were about to weep again, finally drained of all composure. “Then it’s over.”
Before he could react, she moved around the table to Jake and, while the guard stuffed cigarettes into his pocket, put her arms around him, almost falling into him. He stood awkwardly, catching her, not really embracing her, feeling her bones sticking through the smock, brittle enough to snap. She hugged him once, then turned her mouth up to his ear, hidden from the guard. “Thank you. He’s my life.”
She stepped back and let the guard take her arm, but put her other hand on Jake’s chest, pulling at the cloth. “But never tell him. Please.”
When the guard tugged her arm, she went with him, looking over her shoulder at Jake, trying to smile, but the walk was clumsy, a halfhearted, forced shuffle, not even a trace of the lively steps he remembered on the platform.
Burgstrasse was only a few blocks west of the Alex, but he drove, feeling safer in the jeep. There’d be no point in stopping, but he had to see if it was there at all, not some lie, a last attempt to keep playing the angles. The street was across the open sewer of the Spree from the smashed-in cathedral, but part of Number 26 was still standing, just as she’d said, flying a red flag. He passed it slowly, pretending to be lost. Thick walls, stripped now of plaster, a heavy entrance door blocked by guards with Asiatic faces-the familiar Russian hierarchy, Mongols at the bottom. Behind it all, somewhere, Emil looking out a window. But how could Shaeffer get in? A raid in the middle of Berlin, bullets zinging over Lena’s head? Impossible without some trick. But that was his specialty; let him plan it. At least now they knew. Renate’s last catch, her part of the bargain. He stopped near the end of the street to check his wallet-enough money for Frau Metzger until he could get Fleischman to come. One final payment, off the books.
The Prenzlauer building was an old tenement block, three courtyards deep. He followed Renate’s instructions to the second, strung with laundry, then up two flights of murky stairs lighted by a hole some shell had punched through the ceiling. He had to knock a few times before the door finally opened a suspicious crack.
“Frau Metzger? I’ve come about Erich.”
“ You’ve come? And what’s the matter with her, too busy?” She opened the door. “It’s about time. Does she think I’m made of money? Nothing since June, nothing on account. How am I supposed to feed anyone? A boy needs to eat.”
“I’ll pay for what she owes,” Jake said, taking out his wallet.
“So now she’s found an American. Well, it’s not my affair. Better than a Russian, at least. Lots of chocolate for you now,” she said, turning to a child standing near the table. About four, Jake guessed, skinny legs in short pants, with Renate’s dark eyes, but larger, almost too large for the face, wide now in alarm. “Come on, let’s get your things. Don’t be afraid, he’s your mother’s friend,” she said, not unkind but brusque, then turned back to Jake. “Her friend. She’s a fine one. While the rest of us- No, it’s too much,” she said, looking at the money. “She only owes for two months. I’m not a thief. Only what’s owed. I’ll get his things.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’ll send somebody for him. I can’t take him today.”
“What do you mean? She’s not dead, is she?”
“No.”
“Then he goes now. I’m going to my sister. You think I’m staying here, with the Russians? I’ll give her one more week, I said, and then- But anyway, here you are, so it’s all right. Come. I won’t be a minute. There’s not much. Get me clothing coupons, I told her, but did she? No, not her. She couldn’t come herself? She has to send an Ami? You can see how he’s frightened. Well, he never says much. Say hello, Erich. Ouf.” She waved her hand. “Well, he’s like that.”
The boy stared at him silently. Not fear, a numb curiosity, an animal waiting to see what would happen to him.
“But I can’t take him today.”
“Yes, today. I waited and waited. You can’t expect-” She began emptying a drawer, putting things in a string bag. “The war’s over, you know. What does she expect? Here. I told you, there’s not much.”
She handed him the bag, past arguing.
Jake pulled out his wallet again. “But I can’t-let me pay you something extra.”
“A gift? Well, that’s very nice,” she said, taking it. “So maybe she’s lucky now. You see, Erich, he’s all right. You’ll be fine. Come, give auntie a hug.”
She bent down, barely clasping him, an indifferent sendoff. How long had they been together? The boy stood, not moving. “Go on,” she said, giving him a little push. “Go to your mother.”
The boy jerked forward. Jake looked at her hand on the boy’s shoulder, stung, his heart dulled by every terrible thing he’d heard in Berlin and now moved finally by this, a single moment of casual cruelty. What had happened to everybody?
The boy took a step, looking down. Frau Metzger flicked through Jake’s bills, then shoved them in her apron pocket.
“That’s all you can say to him?” Jake said. “Just like that? He’s a child.”
“What do you know about it?” she said, eyes flashing. “I took care of him, didn’t I? While she had her good times. I earned every mark. And how long will you last, I wonder. Well, tell her not to come back when it’s over-the hotel is closed.” She had reached the door and held it open, then looked down at Erich with a twinge of embarrassment. “I did the best I could. You, you be a good boy, don’t forget. Don’t forget your auntie.”
And then they were in the hall, the door closing behind them, a soft click, maybe the only thing the boy wouldn’t forget, a click of the door. They stood motionless for a second, and then the boy lifted his hand, still not speaking, just waiting to be led away.
It was no better in the jeep. He sat quietly, passive, watching the streets go by, like the children from Silesia. Down the gentle slope of Schonhauserallee, then out past the pockmarked walls of the schloss to the Linden. Bicycles and soldiers. The plane wreckage in the Tiergarten. Registering everything without a word. He took Jake’s hand again on the walk from Savignyplatz.
“My god, who’s this?” Lena said.
“Another one for Fleischman. Erich.”
“But where did you-”
“He’s Renate’s child. You remember, from the office?”
“Renate? But I thought all the Jews-”
He stopped her. “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. First let’s get him to the church.”
“First some food, I think,” she said, kneeling down. “Look how thin. You’re hungry? Don’t be afraid, it’s safe here. Do you like cheese?”
She led him over to the table and brought out a small block of rubbery PX cheese. The boy looked at it warily.
“It’s real,” Lena said. “That’s the color it is in America. Here, there’s still some bread. It’s all right-eat.”
He picked up the bread dutifully and took a nibble.
“So Erich, it’s a good name. I knew an Erich once. Dark hair, like yours.” She reached over and touched it. “It’s good, the bread? Here, try some more.” She broke off a piece and offered it to him by hand, gently, the way you would feed a stray. “See, I told you. Now some cheese.”
She fed him for a few minutes, until he began to eat on his own, taking in the food as quietly as the sights on the drive. She looked up at Jake. “Where is she?”
Jake shook his head, a not-in-front-of-the-child gesture. “He’s been living with a woman in Prenzlauer. I think he’s had a rough time. He doesn’t say much.”
“Well, it*s not so important, is it, to talk?” she said to the boy. “Sometimes I’m quiet too, when things are new. We’ll have something to eat, then maybe a little rest. You must be tired. All the way from Prenzlauer.”
The boy was nodding at her, reassured, Jake saw, by her German, familiar, without Jake’s accent.
“We should get him to Fleischman,” Jake said. “It’s getting late.”
“There’s plenty of time,” she said easily, then turned. “But if she’s alive- You’re taking him from his mother? To Fleischman?”
“I promised her I’d find a place. I’ll explain later,” he said, feeling the boy’s eyes on him.
Lena offered him another piece of cheese. “It’s good, yes? There’s more-take as much as you like. Then we’ll sleep, what do you say?” Her voice soft, lulling.
“Lena,” Jake said, “he can’t stay here. We can’t-”
“Yes, I know,” she said, not really hearing it. “But for one night. That basement. You can see how tired he is. It’s all strange for him. You know my name?” she said to the boy. “It’s Lena.” She yawned, an exaggerated gesture, raising her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so tired too.”
“Lena,” Jake said. “You know what I mean.”
She looked at him. “Yes, I know. It’s just for tonight. What’s the matter with you? You can’t send him away like this. Look at his eyes. Men.”
But the eyes were still wide, not drooping, moving from one to the other as if he were making a decision. Finally he fixed them on Jake, got up, and came over to him, lifting his hand again. For a second, confused, Jake thought he was asking to leave, but then he spoke, surprisingly clear after the long silence.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said, holding out his hand.
Lena smiled, laughing softly to herself. “Well, you’re good for that,” she said as Jake led him, two men, to the toilet.
After that there was nothing to do but let her take charge, whatever he’d planned slipping away like a card move turned by an unexpected joker in the deck. From the table, he could see her settle the boy on the bed, running her hand over his forehead and talking softly, a low, steady stream of words. He lit a cigarette, restless, then glanced at his notebook. Renate being picked up in the cafe, an idle flirtation, the greifers greifer. The story Ron wanted him to share. He looked again into the bedroom, where Lena was still talking the boy to sleep, and, not knowing what else to do, started putting the notes in order to block out the story, wondering how to tell it without the one thing that had really mattered. But when he took a sheet of paper, it seemed to frame itself, opening with Marthe Behn, then dissolving to the first cafe and working its way back, one sinking twist after another, to the moment of the nod. Not an apologia; something more complicated, a crime story where everyone was guilty. He wrote in a rush, wanting to get it done, as if it would all go away once it was on paper, just words. The shoes, the mother, Hans Becker, trading favors. Still beyond belief. What had happened to everybody? A city where he used to drink beer under trees. How many had even looked up in the cafe when the men arrived? Not accomplices, people looking the other way. Except Renate, who still saw the faces.
He’d been writing for a while, lost in it, before he realized that the murmuring in the bedroom had stopped, the only sound in the flat the faint scratch of his pen. Lena was standing in the doorway watching him, a tired smile on her face.
“He’s asleep,” she said. “You’re working?”
“I wanted to get it done while it’s fresh.”
“Sewing with a hot needle,” she said, a German expression. She sat down across from him, taking one of the cigarettes. “I don’t think he’s well. I want Rosen to look at him, just in case. I saw him again today- he’s always here, it seems.”
“He takes care of the girls.”
“Oh,” she said, a little flustered. “I didn’t realize. Still, a doctor-”
“Lena, we can’t keep him. You don’t want to get attached.”
“Yes, I know. But for one night-” She stopped, looking at him. “That’s the terrible part, isn’t it? Nobody’s attached to him. Nobody. I thought, standing over there, it’s a little like a family. You working like this, him sleeping.”
“We’re not his family,” he said, but gently.
“No,” she said, letting it go. “So tell me about Renate. What happened? He won’t hear now.”
“Here,” he said, moving the papers across the table. “It’s all there.”
He got up and went over to the brandy bottle and poured two glasses. He set hers down, but she ignored it, her eyes fixed on the page.
“She told you this?” she said, reading.
“Yes.”
“My god.” A slow turn of the page.
When she finished, she pushed the papers back, then took a sip from the glass.
“You don’t mention the child.”
“She doesn’t want anybody to know. Especially the child.”
“But nobody will know why she did it.”
“Does it matter, what people think? The fact is, she did it.”
“For the child. You do anything for your child.”
“That’s what she said,” he said, slightly jarred. “Lena, this is what she wanted. She doesn’t want him to know.”
“Who he is.”
“That would be a hell of a thing to carry around with you, wouldn’t it? All this,” he said, touching the paper. “He’s better off this way. He’ll never have to know any of it.”
“Not to know your parents-” she said, brooding.
“Sometimes it can’t be helped.”
She looked up at him, then put her hands on the table to get up. “Yes, sometimes,” she said, turning away. “Do you want something to eat? I can fix-”
“No. Sit. I have some news.” He paused. “Renate saw Emil. She told me where he is.”
She stopped, halfway out of her chair. “You waited to tell me this?”
“There wasn’t time, with the boy.”
She sat down. “So it’s come. Where?”
“The Russians are holding him in a building in Burgstrasse.”
“Burgstrasse,” she said, trying to place it.
“In the east. It’s guarded. I went to see it.”
“And?”
“And it’s guarded. You don’t just walk in.”
“So what do we do?”
“We don’t do anything. We let Shaeffer’s team handle it-they’re experts at this.”
“Experts at what?”
“Kidnapping. That’s what it will mean. The Russians aren’t going to hand him over-they probably won’t even admit they have him. So Shaeffer needs to figure out a way. He wanted to use you. Kind of a decoy.”
She looked down at the table, taking this in, then picked up the glass and finished her brandy.
“Yes, all right,” she said.
“All right what?”
“I’ll do it.”
“No, you won’t. People go to the Russians, they don’t always come back. I’m not taking that risk. This is a military operation, Lena.”
“We can’t leave him there. He came for me-he risked his life. I owe him this much.”
“You don’t owe him this.”
“But Russians-”
“I told you, I’ll talk to Shaeffer. If anybody can get him, he can. He wants him. He’s been waiting for this.”
“And you don’t, is that it? You don’t want him?”
“It’s not that simple.”
She reached over. “You can’t leave him there. Not with the Russians. I won’t.”
“A few weeks ago you thought he was dead.”
“But he’s not. So now it’s this. You were the detective, looking everywhere. So you found him. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It was.”
“But not now?”
“Not if it’s dangerous for you.”
“I’m not afraid of that. I want it to be over. What kind of life do you think it will be for us, knowing he’s there? With them. I want it to be over. Not this prison-you don’t even want me to leave the flat. Talk to your friend. Tell him I want to do it. I want to get him out.”
“So you can leave him? He won’t thank you for that.”
She lowered her head. “No, he won’t thank me for that. But he’ll be free.”
“And that’s the only reason?”
She looked over at him, then reached across, touching his face with her finger. “What a little boy you are. After everything that’s happened, to be jealous. Emil’s my family-it’s different, not the way it is with you. Don’t you know that?”
“I thought I did.”
“Thought. And then, like that, a schoolboy again. You remember Frau Hinkel?”
“Yes, two lines.”
“She said I had to choose. But I did. Even before the war. I chose you. How silly you are, not to know that.”
“I still don’t want you taking chances with Shaeffer.”
“Maybe that’s my choice too. Mine.”
He met her stare, then looked away. “Let me talk to him. Maybe he doesn’t need you anyway, now that we know where Emil is.”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait. We don’t go into the east. We don’t go to Burgstrasse. They’ll move him for sure if they think we know. And we don’t volunteer. Understand?”
“But you’ll tell me if they do want-”
He nodded, cutting her off, then snatched her hand. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Well, do you know something? Neither do I,” she said, making light of it, then rubbed his hand. “Not now.” She tilted her head, alert. “Was that him? Let me check.” She slid her hand away and hurried to the bedroom.
Jake sat watching her go, uneasy. Another bargain he shouldn’t have made. But nothing risky, whatever Shaeffer said. And then what? Three of them.
She came back into the room with her finger to her lips, half closing the door.
“He’s asleep, but restless. We’ll have to be quiet.”
“He’s going to stay in there?”
“We’ll move him later, when he’s really asleep.”
She came over to him and kissed his forehead, then began unbuttoning his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“I want to see you. Not the uniform.”
“Lena, we have to talk about this.”
“No, we’ve already talked. It’s decided. Now we’re going to pretend-the children are asleep, but there’s the couch, if we’re quiet. Let’s see how quiet we can be.”
“You’re just trying to change the subject.”
“Ssh.” She kissed him. “Not a sound.”
He smiled at her. “Wait till you hear the couch.”
“Then we’ll go slowly. It’s nice slow.”
She was right. The quiet itself became exciting, each touch furtive, as if the creak of a spring would give them away. When he slipped inside her, he moved so slowly that it seemed something only they knew, a secret between them, betrayed by the gasp of breath in his ear. Then the gentle rocking, an endless, sweet tease, until finally it ended as it began, the same rhythm, so that not even the shuddering disturbed the room around them. She kept him in her afterward, stroking his back, and for a few minutes he felt no difference between making love and simply being there, the one drifting into the other.
But the couch was cramped and awkward, its lumps poking into the usual forgetting, the unconsciousness of sex, and instead of drifting, his mind began to dart away. Had it been like this with them? Another couple using the couch so they wouldn’t wake their boy? Uncannily, as if he’d spoken, she reached up to touch his face.
“I chose you,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, kissing her, then withdrew and sat up next to her, restless. “Do you think he heard?”
She shook her head, dreamy. “Cover me. I just want to lie here for a minute. How can you get up?”
“I don’t know. Do you want a drink?” he said, going over to pour one.
“Look at you,” she said, watching him, then stirred, lifting herself up. “Jake? The boy-I noticed. I thought all the Jews-you know,” she said, nodding at his penis, as self-conscious as Renate had been, even lying there still wet with him.
“She didn’t have it done. She wanted him to be German.”
Lena sat up, troubled, holding the dress to cover herself. “She wanted that? Even after-”
He took a drink. “To protect him, Lena.”
“Yes,” she said dully, shaking her head. “My god, what it must have been like for her.”
He looked down at the story on the table with its missing piece. “You said it yourself-you do anything for your child.” He took the glass again, then stopped it halfway to his lips and put it down in a rush. “Of course.”
“Of course what?”
“Nothing,” he said, moving over to his clothes. “Something I just thought of.”
“Where are you going?” she said, watching him dress.
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it. A reporter’s supposed to know when something’s missing. You read the story and you can feel it’s not there.” He looked up, finally aware of her. “Just a hunch. I’ll be back.”
“At this hour?”
“Don’t wait up.” He bent over and kissed her forehead. “And don’t open the door.”
“But what-”
“Ssh, not now.” He held his finger to his lips. “You’ll wake Erich. I’ll be back.”
He raced out of the building, then up the side street where he’d stashed the jeep, fumbling in the dark with the ignition. There was only a glimmer of moon in the narrow streets off the square, but when he got up to the broad Charlottenburger Chausee there was an open field of light, pale white and unexpectedly beautiful. Now, when he had no time to look at it, the blunt, unlovely city had turned graceful, making him stop in surprise, its secret self, maybe there all the time, when everything else was dark. It occurred to him, fancifully, that it was finally lighting the way for him, like Hansel’s white pebbles, down the wide, empty street, then up Schloss Strasse, making good time, and still there when he needed it most, picking his way through the trail in the rubble, all easy going, so that he knew he must be right. Not even a shadow at young Willi’s lookout post, just the pointing, friendly light. When Professor Brandt opened the door, he no longer had any doubts at all.
“I’ve come for the files,” he said.
“How did you know?” Professor Brandt said as Jake started to read.
They were sitting at a table with a single lamp, a pool of light just wide enough for the pages but not their faces, so that his voice seemed disembodied.
“He told them at Kransberg you were dead,” Jake said absently, trying to concentrate. “What possible reason could he have, unless he didn’t want them to find you? Didn’t want to take the chance-”
“That I would tell them,” he said. “I see. He thought that.”
“Maybe he thought they’d search.” He turned a page, a report from Mittelwerks in Nordhausen, another piece missing from the Document Center. Not cross-referenced, never handed over-the missing part of the story, like Renate’s child. “Why did he leave them with you?”
“He didn’t know how bad it was in Berlin, how far the Russians had come. Not just the east, almost a circle. Only Spandau was open, but for how long? A rumor, that’s all. Who knew? It was possible he wouldn’t get out-I thought so myself. If they were captured-”
“So he hid them with you. In case. Did you read them?”
“Later, yes. I thought he had died, you see. I wanted to know.”
“But you didn’t destroy them?”
“No. I thought, someday it’s important. They’ll lie, all of them. ‘We had nothing to do with it.’ Even now they- I thought, someone has to answer for this. It’s important to know.”
“But you didn’t turn them over, either.”
“Then you told me he was living. I couldn’t. He’s my son, you understand. Still.”
He paused, causing Jake to look up. In his dressing gown he seemed frail, no longer held together by the formal suit, but the scrawny neck was erect, as if the old high collar were still in place. “Was it wrong? I don’t know, Herr Geismar. Maybe I kept them for you. Maybe they answer to you.” He turned away. “And now it’s done-you have them. So take them, please. I don’t want them in my house anymore. You’ll excuse me, I’m tired.”
“Wait. I need your help. My German isn’t good enough.”
“For that? Your German is adequate. The problem, maybe, is believing what you read. It’s just what it says. Simple German.” He made a small grimace. “The language of Schiller.”
“Not the abbreviations. They’re all technical. Here’s von Braun, requesting special workers. French, is that right?”
“Yes, French prisoners. The SS supplied the list from the campsengineering students, machinists. Von Braun made his selection from that. The construction workers, it didn’t matter, one shovel’s as good as another. But the precision work-“ He looked over to the word Jake was pointing at. ”Die cutter.“
“So he was there.”
“Of course he was there. They all went there, to inspect, to supervise. It was their factory, you understand, the scientists. They saw it, Herr Geismar. Not space, all those dreams. They saw this. You see the other letter, from Lechter, where he says the disciplinary measures are having an unfortunate effect? The workers don’t like to see men hanging-it slows production. Exact words. His solution? Hang them off-site. Yes, and Lechter complains that on the last visit some of his colleagues were taken to an area where cholera had broken out. Couldn’t this be prevented in the future? Visitors should be taken to safe areas only. To risk the health-” He stopped, clearing his throat. “Would you like some water?” he said, getting up, an obvious excuse to leave the table.
Jake turned another page, hearing the water run behind him. A memo requesting a transfer back to Peenemunde for a Dr. Jaeger, proof that he’d been there, a carbon for the files, evidence for Bernie. Just paper. Was anyone not compromised? Drinking brandy at Kransberg, waiting for visas. But how much had Tully known? He realized for the first time, a Gunther point, that no one had actually seen the files but Professor Brandt. Tully must have left the center as frustrated as Jake had been, all the way to Berlin for an incomplete story.
“Here’s Emil,” he said, turning to a page filled with figures.
“Yes,” Professor Brandt said over his shoulder, “the estimates. The estimates.” He shuffled back to his chair.
“But of what? What’s this?” Jake pointed to one of the sets of numbers.
“Calories,” Professor Brandt said quietly, not looking, clearly familiar with the paper.
“Eleven hundred,” Jake said, stuck on the math. “That’s calories?” He looked over at the old man. “Tell me.”
Professor Brandt took a sip of water. “Per day. At eleven hundred calories per day, how long would a man survive? Depending on the original body weight. You see the series on the left. If it fell-to nine hundred, say-the factors average out to sixty. Sixty days-two months. But of course it’s not exact. The variables are not in the numbers. In the
¦ men. Some more, some less. They die at their own speed. But it’s useful, the average. You can calculate how many calories it would take to extend it, say, for another month. But they never extended it. The work in the first month, before they weakened, was actually more productive than any extension. The table near the bottom demonstrates that. There was no point in keeping them alive unless they were specialists. The numbers prove it.“ He looked up. ”He was right. I checked the math. The second page shows how much to increase rations for skilled workers. I think, you know, that he was using this to persuade them to allow more food, but I can’t be sure. The others died to the formula. An average only, but accurate. He based them on actual numbers from the previous month. Not a difficult exercise.“
He interrupted himself for another sip, then continued, a teacher working through a long blackboard proof. “The others also. Simple. Time of assembly, units per twenty-four-hour period. You don’t have to look, I remember them all. Optimum number of workers per line. Sometimes they had too many. The assembly was complicated- better to have one skilled set of hands than three men who didn’t know what they were doing. He proves this somewhere. You would think, common sense, but evidently they liked to see this. In numbers. These were the kinds of problems they had him working on.”
Jake looked at the paper, not saying anything, letting Professor Brandt collect himself as he drank the last of the water.
“He must have done other work, not just this.”
“Yes, of course. It’s a great achievement, technically. You can see that. The mathematics involved, the engineering. Every German can be proud.” He shook his head. “Dreams of space. This is what they were worth. Eleven hundred calories a day.”
Jake flicked through the remaining pages, then closed the folder and stared at it. Not just Emil, most of the team.
“You’re surprised?” Professor Brandt said quietly. “Your old friend?”
Jake said nothing. Just numbers on paper. Finally he looked up at Professor Brandt, the simple, inadequate question. “What happened to everybody? ”
“You want to know that?” Professor Brandt said, nodding, then paused. “I don’t know. I asked too. Who were these children? Our children? And what’s my answer? I don’t know.“ He glanced away, toward the stuffed bookshelves. ”My whole life I thought it was something apart, science. Everything else is lies, but not that. So beautiful, numbers. Always true. If you understand them, they explain the world. I thought that.“ He looked back at Jake. ”I don’t know,“ he said, exhaling it, a gasp. ”Even the numbers they ruined. Now they don’t explain anything.“
He reached over and picked up the folder. “You said you were his friend. What will you do with this?”
“You’re his father. What would you do?”
Professor Brandt brought it closer to his chest, so that involuntarily Jake started to reach out his hand. A few pieces of paper, the only proof Bernie would ever have.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Professor Brandt said. “It’s just that-I want you to take it. If I see him again, I don’t want to say I gave it up. You took it.”
Jake gripped the file and pulled it firmly out of the old man’s hands. “Does it really make any difference?”
“I don’t know. But I can say it, I didn’t give them away, him and his friends. I can say that.”
“All right.” Jake hesitated. “It’s the right thing, you know.”
“Yes, the right thing,” Professor Brandt said faintly.
He drew himself up, erect, then moved away from the light, just a voice again.
“And you’ll tell Lena? That it wasn’t me?” He paused. “If she stops coming, you see, there’s no one.”
He didn’t have to tell her anything. She was asleep on the bed, clothed, the boy next to her. He closed the door and sank down on the lumpy couch to read through the file again, even more dismayed than before, time enough now to see the picture fill up with its grisly details, each one a kind of indictment. Valuable to Bernie, but to who else? Is that what Tully intended to sell? But why would Sikorsky want it? The simple answer was that he didn’t-he wanted the scientists, busily making their deals with Breimer, each page in the file a pointing finger that they thought had gone away. Valuable to them.
He lay back with his arm over his eyes, thinking about Tully, a business in persilscheins before Kransberg, selling releases at Bensheim, sometimes selling them twice. Crooks followed a pattern-what worked once worked again. And these were better than persilscheim, as valuable as a ticket out. Deplorable things might have happened, but there was nothing to involve them but pieces of paper, something worth paying for.
When he awoke, it was light and Lena was at the table, staring straight ahead, the closed file in front of her.
“Did you read it?” he said, sitting up.
“Yes.” She pushed the file aside. “You made notes. Are you going to write about this?”
“They’re points to verify at the Document Center. To prove it all fits.“
“Prove to whom?” she said vacantly, then stood up. “Do you want some coffee?“
He watched her light the gas ring and measure out the coffee, going through the ordinary motions of the morning ritual as if nothing had happened.
“Did you understand them? I can explain.”
“No, don’t explain anything. I don’t want to know.”
“You have to know.”
She turned away to face the stove. “Go wash. The coffee will be ready in a minute.”
He got up and went over to the table, glancing down at the folder, caught off balance by her reaction.
“Lena, we need to talk about this. What’s in here-”
“Yes, I know. Terrible things. You’re just like the Russians. ‘Look at the film. See how terrible you are, all you people. What you did in the war.’ I don’t want to look anymore. The war’s over.”
“This isn’t the war. Read it. They starved people to death, watched them die. That’s not the war, that’s something else.”
“Stop it,” she said, raising her hands to her ears. “I don’t want to hear it. Emil didn’t do those things.”
“Yes, he did, Lena,” he said quietly. “He did.” “How do you know? Because of that paper? How do you know what they ordered him to do? What he had to do? Look at Renate.”
“You think it’s the same? A Jew in hiding? They would’ve murdered-”
“I don’t know. Neither do you. He had to protect his family tooit could be. They took families. Maybe to protect me and Peter-”
“You don’t really believe that, do you? Read it.” He flung open the folder. “Read it. He wasn’t protecting you.”
She looked down. “You want me to hate him. It’s not enough for you that I’m with you? You want me to hate him too? I won’t. He’s my family, what’s left of it. He’s all that’s left.”
“Read it,” Jake said evenly. “This isn’t about us.”
“No?”
“No. It’s about some guy in Burgstrasse with blood all over his hands. I don’t even know who he is anymore. Not anyone I know.”
“Then let him tell you. Let him explain. You owe him that.”
“Owe him? As far as I’m concerned, he can rot in Burgstrasse. They’re welcome to him.”
He looked at her stricken expression and then, angry at himself for being angry, left the room, closing the bathroom door with a thud. He splashed water on his face and rinsed his mouth, as sour as his mood. Not about them, except for her unexpected defense, guilty with an explanation, what everyone in Berlin said, now even her. Two lines in the cards. Still here, even after the file.
He came back to find her standing where he had left her, staring at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She nodded, not saying anything, then turned, poured out the coffee, and brought it to the table. “Sit,” she said, “it’ll get cold.” A haus-frau gesture, to signal it was over.
But when he sat down, she stood next to the table, her face still troubled. “We can’t leave him there,” she said softly.
“You think he’ll be better off in an Allied prison? That’s what this means, you know. They try people for this.” He put his hand on the folder.
“I won’t leave him there. You don’t have to do it. I will. Tell your friend Shaeffer,” she said, her voice flat.
He looked up at her. “I just want to know one thing.”
She met his gaze. “I chose you,” she said.
“Not that. Not us. Just so I know. Do you believe what’s in here? What he did?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding, barely audible.
He flipped open the cover and turned the pages, then pointed to one of the tables.
“This is how long it takes-”
“Don’t.”
“Sixty days, more or less,” he said, unable to stop. “These are the death rates. Still want to get him out?”
He looked up to find that her eyes had filled, turning to him with a kind of mute pleading.
“We can’t leave him there. With them,” she said.
He went back to the page with its spiky typed numbers and pushed it away. Two lines.
They avoided each other most of the morning, afraid to start in again, while she tended to Erich and he worked up the rest of his notes about Renate for Ron. The story they all had to have, but at least his would be first, ready to send. At noon Rosen turned up and examined the boy. “It’s a question of food only,” he said. “Otherwise he’s healthy.” Jake, relieved at the interruption, gathered up his papers, eager to get away, but to his surprise Lena insisted on coming along, leaving Erich with one of Danny’s girls.
“I have to go to the press camp first,” he said. “Then we can see Fleischman.”
“No, not Fleischman,” she said, “something else,” and then didn’t say anything more, so they drove without talking, drained of speech.
The press camp, depleted after Potsdam, was quiet except for the poker game. Jake took only a minute to drop off the notes, grabbing two beers from the bar on his way out.
“Here,” he said at the jeep, handing her one.
“No, I don’t want it,” she said, not sullen but melancholy, like the overcast skies. She directed him toward Tempelhof, and as they got nearer, her mood grew even darker, nothing in her face but a grim determination.
“What’s at the airport?”
“No, beyond. The kirchhof. Keep going.”
They entered one of the cemeteries that sprawled north of Tempelhof.
“Where are we going?”
“I want to visit. Stop over there. No flowers, do you notice? No one has flowers now.”
What he saw instead were two GIs with a POW work party, digging a long row of graves.
“What gives?” he said to one of the GIs. “Expecting an epidemic?”
“Winter. Major says they’re going to drop like flies once the cold sets in. Get it done before the ground freezes.”
Jake looked beyond a cluster of tombstones to another set of fresh graves, then another, the whole cemetery pockmarked with waiting holes.
Peter’s was a small marker, no bigger than a piece of rubble, set in a scraggly patch of ground.
“They don’t keep it up,” Lena said. “I used to take care of it. And then I stopped coming.”
“But you wanted to come today,” Jake said, uneasy. “This is about Emil, isn’t it?”
“You think you know everything he did,” she said, looking at the marker. “Before you judge him, maybe you should know this too.”
“Lena, why are we doing this?” he said gently. “It doesn’t change anything. I know he had a child.”
She kept looking at the marker, quiet, then turned to him. “Yours. He had yours. It was your child.”
“Mine?” he said, an involuntary word to fill the space, taken up now by a kind of dizziness, an absurd rush of elated surprise, almost goofy, caught off guard in some cartoon of waiting rooms and cigars. In a graveyard. He looked away. “Mine,” he said, guarded again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why? To make you sad? If he had lived-I don’t know. But he didn’t.”
“But how-you’re sure?”
A disappointed half-smile. “Yes. I can count. You don’t have to be a mathematician for that.”
“Emil didn’t know?”
“No. How could I tell him that? It never occurred to him.” She turned back to the marker. “To count.”
Jake ran his hand through his hair, at a loss, not sure what to say next. Their child. He thought of her face in the church basement while he read. The way it would have been.
“What did he look like?”
“You don’t believe me? You want proof? A photograph?”
“I didn’t mean that.” He took her arm. “I want it to be. I’m glad we-” He stopped, aware of the marker, and dropped his hand. “I was just curious. Did he look like me?”
“Your eyes. He had your eyes.”
“And Emil never-”
“He didn’t know your eyes so well.” She turned. “No, never. He looked like me. German. He was German, your child.”
“A son,” he said numbly, his mind flooded with it.
“You left. I thought for good. And here it was inside me, this piece of you. No one would know, just me. So. You remember at the station, when you went away? I knew then.”
“And you never said.”
“What could I say? ‘Stay’? No one needed to know, not even Emil. He was happy, you know. He always wanted a child, and it didn’t happen, and then there it was. You don’t look at the eyes-you see your own child. So he did that. He was the father of your child. He paid for him. He loved him. And then, when we lost him, it broke his heart. That’s what he was doing-while he did all those other things. The same man. Do you understand now? You want to let him ‘rot’? There is a debt here. You owe him this much, for your child.”
“Lena-”
“And me. What did I do? I lied to him about you. I lied to him about Peter. Now you want me to turn my back on him? I can’t do it. You know, when Peter died-American bombs-I thought, it’s a punishment. For all the lies. Oh, I know, don’t say it, it was crazy, I know. But not this. I have to put it right.”
“By telling him now?”
“No, never. It would kill him to know that. But to help him-it’s a chance to make it right. A debt.”
He took a step back. “Not mine.”
“Yes, yours too. That’s why I brought you here.” She pointed to the marker. “That’s you too. Here, in Berlin. One of us. His childyour child. You come in your uniform-so easy to judge when it’s not you. All these terrible people, look what they did. Walk away. Let’s go to bed-everything will be like before.” She turned to him. “Nothing’s like before. This is the way it is now-all mixed up. Nothing’s like before.”
He looked at her, disconcerted. “Maybe one thing. You must still love him, to do this.”
“Oh my god, love.” She moved forward and put her hands on his chest, almost pounding it. “Stubborn. Stubborn. If I didn’t love you, do you think I would have kept it? It would have been so easy to get rid of it. A mistake. These things happen. I couldn’t do it. I wanted to keep you. I looked at him, I could see you. So I made Emil his father. Love him? I used Emil to keep you.”
He said nothing, then took her hands off his chest. “And this would make it right.”
“No, not right. But it’s something.”
“He’ll go to prison.”
“It’s for certain? Who decides that?”
“It’s the law.”
“American law. For Germans.”
“I am an American.”
She looked up at him. “Then you decide,” she said, moving away to start back. “You decide.”
He stood for a moment, looking from the row of graves down to the marker, the part of him that was here now, then turned slowly and followed her down the hill. Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter