Word had already gotten around the press camp by the time Jake got back.
“Just the man I’m looking for,” Tommy Ottinger said, looming over the typewriter Jake was using to peck out some notes. “First thing that’s happened all week and there you are, right on the spot. How, by the way? ”
Jake smiled. “Just taking some pictures.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Dead soldier washed up in the lake.”
“Come on, I’ve got to go on tonight. You can take your own sweet time with Collier’s. Who was he?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, you might have checked his tags,” Tommy said, waiting.
“I wish I’d thought of that.”
Tommy stared at him.
“Really,” Jake said.
“Some reporter.”
“What does Ron say?”
“A John Doe. No tags.”
Jake looked at him for a second, thinking. “So why did you ask me?”
“ ‘Cause I don’t trust Ron. I trust you.”
“Look, Tommy, here’s what I know. A stiff washes up. Dead about a day, I’d say. He had some money on him, which got the Russians all excited. The Big Three left in a hurry. I’ll give you my notes. Use whatever you want. Stalin’s face-it’s a nice touch.” He stopped, meeting Tommy’s stare. “He had tags. I just didn’t look. So why would Ron-?”
Tommy smiled and took a chair. “Because that’s what Ron does. Covers ass. His own. The army’s. We don’t want to embarrass the army. Especially in front of the Russians.”
“Why would they be embarrassed?”
“They don’t know what they have yet. Except a soldier in Potsdam.”
“And that’s embarrassing?”
“It might be,” Tommy said, lighting a cigarette. “Potsdam’s the biggest black market center in Berlin.”
“I thought the Reichstag.”
“The Reichstag, Zoo Station. But Potsdam’s the biggest.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s in the Russian zone,” Tommy said simply, surprised at the question. “No MPs. The Russians don’t care. They are the black market. They’ll buy anything. The others-the MPs’ll make a sweep every once in a while, arrest a few Germans just to keep up appearances. Not that it matters. The Russians don’t even bother. Every day’s Saturday on Main Street in Potsdam.”
Jake smiled. “So he wasn’t attending the conference.”
“Not a chance.”
“And Ron doesn’t want his mother to read about her boy in the papers.”
“Not that way.” Tommy looked behind Jake. “Do you, Ron?”
“I want to talk to you,” Ron said to Jake, visibly annoyed. “Where’d you get the pass?”
“I didn’t. Nobody asked,” Jake said.
“You know, we’ve got a waiting list for press credentials here. I could free up a slot any time I want.”
“Relax. I didn’t see a thing. See?” He waved at the paper in the typewriter. “Geranium star. Lots of chimneys. Local color, that’s all. Unless you’ve got an ID for me?”
Ron sighed. “Don’t push me on this, okay? The Russians find out there was press there, they’ll make a formal protest and I’ll have your ass out of here on the first truck.”
Jake spread his hands. “I’ll never go to Potsdam again. Okay? Now have a beer and tell us where the body is.”
“The Russians have it. We’re trying to get it released.”
“Why the delay?”
“There’s no delay. They’re fucking Russians.‘” He paused. “It’s probably the money. They’re trying to figure out how much they can keep.” He glanced at Jake. “How much did he have?”
“No idea. A lot. Thousands. Double whatever they give you.”
“I’m on tonight,” Tommy said. “You going to have an official statement?”
“I don’t have an official anything,” Ron said. “As far as I know, somebody got drunk and fell in the lake. If you think that’s a story, be my guest.” Jake looked at him. No tags. No bullet. But Ron was rushing on. “We will have a release on the first session, though, in a couple of hours. If anybody cares.”
“Warm greetings were exchanged by the Allies,” Tommy said. “Generalissimo Stalin made a statement expressing a wish for a lasting peace. An agenda for the conference was approved.”
Ron grinned. “And to think you weren’t even there. No wonder you’re the best.”
“And a soldier happened to fall in the lake.”
“That’s what they tell me.” He turned to Jake. “Stay in town. I mean it.”
Jake watched him walk off. “When did the Russians close off Potsdam?” he said to Tommy.
“Over the weekend. Before the conference.” He looked at Jake. “What?”
“He’d only been in the water a day.”
“How do you know?” Tommy said, alert.
Jake waved his hand. “I don’t, for sure. But he wasn’t that bloated.”
“So?”
“So how did he get into Potsdam? If it was closed off?” “What the hell. You did,” Tommy said, watching him. “Of course, you have an honest face.”
The piano music was coming through the open windows, not Mendelssohn this time but Broadway, party songs. Inside, the house was filled with uniforms and smoke and the clink of glasses. Gelferstrasse was entertaining. Jake stood for a minute in the hall, watching. There was the usual hum of conversation, laced with Russian from a group standing near the spread of cold cuts, and the usual music, but it was a cocktail party without women, oddly dispirited, looking for someone to flirt with. Men stood in groups talking shop or sometimes not saying anything at all, lifting glasses from the trays passed by the old couple and tossing them back quickly, as if they knew already that nothing better was going to come along. The host seemed to be Colonel Muller, whose silver hair moved through the crowd as he introduced people, occasionally getting clamped on the shoulder by a friendly Russian, as awkward and unlikely in the role as Judge Hardy himself would have been. Jake headed for the stairs.
“Geismar, come in,” Muller said, handing him a glass. “Sorry we had to requisition the dining room, but there’s plenty of grub. You’re welcome to whatever’s left.” In fact, the dining table, pushed against the wall, was still heaped with ham and salami and smoked fish, a banquet.
“What’s the occasion?”
“We’re having the Russians over,” Muller said, making them sound like a couple. “They like parties. They invite us to Karlshorst, then we invite them here. Back and forth. It greases the wheels.”
“With vodka.”
Muller smiled. “They don’t mind bourbon either.”
“Let me take a rain check. I can’t speak a word of Russian.”
“A few of them speak German. Anyway, in a while it won’t matter. It’s always a little awkward at first,” he said, looking toward the party, “but after they’ve had a few, they just say things in Russian and you nod and they laugh and we’re all good fellows.”
“Allies and brothers.”
“Actually, yes. It’s important to them, this stuff. They don’t like being left out. So we don’t.“ He took a drink. ”This isn’t what it looks like. It’s work.“
Jake held up his glass. “And somebody’s got to do it.” ‹›Muller nodded. “That’s right, somebody does. Nobody told me I’d end up feeding drinks to Russians, but that’s what we do now, so I do it and I could use a new face to liven things up." He smiled. ‹›“Besides, you owe me a favor. Lieutenant Erlich says I’m supposed to chew you out, but I’m going to let it pass.“
“You’re supposed to?”
“You mean, who am I? I guess we didn’t meet. With the congressman giving speeches. I’m Colonel Muller. Fred,” he said, extending his hand. “I work for General Clay.”
“Doing what?”
“I look after some of the functional departments. Keep them in line when I have to. Lieutenant Erlich’s one of them.”
Jake smiled. “Somebody’s got to do it.”
Muller nodded again. “I’d take the Russians any day. They’re touchy, but they don’t write home. Your bunch is more trouble.”
“So why are you going to let it pass?”
“You getting out to Potsdam? Ordinarily I wouldn’t. But I don’t see that it’s done anybody any harm.” He paused. “I served with General Patton. He said to look out for you, you were a friend to the army.”
“Everybody’s a friend to the army.”
“You wouldn’t know it from the papers back home. They come over here, don’t know the first thing, just point fingers to get themselves noticed.”
“Maybe I’m no different.”
“Maybe not. But a man puts in time with the army, he’s more likely to see the whole thing, not try to make a mountain out of a molehill.”
Jake looked over the rim of his glass. “I found a man’s body, and so far nobody’s even asked me about it. Is that the molehill you had in mind?”
Muller stared back. “All right, I’m asking you. Is there anything we should know?”
“I know he was shot. I know he was carrying a lot of cash. I may be a friend to the army, but you try to keep what I do know quiet and it’s like waving red meat at a dog. I get curious.”
Muller sighed. “Nobody’s trying to hide anything.” He looked away at the party, then back at Jake. “Nobody’s going to start anything either. There are almost two hundred reporters assigned to Berlin. They’re all looking for something to write about. So they go see the bunker, cash in some cigarettes over at Zoo Station. Next thing you know, everybody’s in the black market. Well, maybe everybody is, a little. What’s ordinary here isn’t ordinary at home.”
“Is it ordinary to get shot?”
“More than you’d think,” he said wearily. “The war’s not over here. Look at them,” he said, indicating the Russians. “Toasts. Their men are still all over, drunk half the time. Last week a jeepload of them start waving guns down in Hermannplatz-our zone-and before you could say boo, one of our MPs starts shooting and we’re back at the O.K. Corral. Three dead, one ours. So we protest to the Russians and they protest back and there are still three people dead. Ordinary.”
He turned to face Jake, his eyes gentle. “Look, we’re not angels here. You know what an occupation army does? It occupies. They pull guard duty. They stand in front of buildings. They’ve got nothing but time. So they bitch and chase girls and make a little money selling their PX rations, which they’re not supposed to do but they figure they’re entitled, they won the war, and maybe they’re right. And sometimes they get into trouble. Sometimes they even get shot. It happens.” He paused. “But it doesn’t have to be an international incident. And it doesn’t have to make the army look bad. It’s what happens here.”
“But they’ll file a report. It’s still not that ordinary, is it?”
“And you want to see it.”
“I’m curious, that’s all. I never found a body before.”
Muller looked at him, appraising. “It might take a while. We don’t know who he is yet.”
“I know who he is.”
Muller raised his eyes. “I thought there weren’t any tags.”
“I knew his face. We were on the plane together. Lieutenant Tully.”
Muller said nothing, just stared, then slowly nodded his head. “Come to my office tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do. Elssholzstrasse.”
“Which is where?”
“Schoneberg. Behind Kleist Park. The drivers will know.”
“The old Supreme Court?”
“That’s right,” Muller said, surprised. “It was the best we could find. Not too much damage. Maybe God has a soft spot for judges. Even Nazi judges.”
Take grinned. “By the way, did anyone ever tell you-”
“I know, Judge Hardy. I suppose it could be worse. I don’t know, I haven’t seen the movies.” He glanced at Jake. “Tomorrow, then. That’s two favors you owe me. Now come and meet some Russians. Sounds like things are revving up.” He motioned toward the front room, where the piano had switched from Cole Porter to a thumping Russian song. “They’re the real story in Berlin, you know. They’ve been running things for two months-it’s their town. And look at it. Remind me to show you another report tomorrow. Infant mortality. Six out of ten babies are going to die here this month. Maybe more. Die. Of course, that’s politics. Scandal sells papers.”
“I’m not looking for any scandal,” Jake said quietly.
“No? You might find some, though,” Muller said, his voice weary again. “I don’t suppose your lieutenant was up to much good. But if you ask me, that’s not the real scandal. Six out often. Not just one soldier. Life’s eheap in Berlin. Try that story. I have all the facts you need for that one.” He stopped, catching himself, and finished off his drink. “Well. Let’s go promote some Allied cooperation.”
“They seem to be doing all right,” Jake said, trying to be light. “It’s turning into a Russian party.”
“It always does,” Muller said. “We just bring the food.”
But language had divided the party into its own occupation zones. The Russians Jake met nodded formally, tried a few words in German, and retreated back into their steady drinking. The piano had returned to the American zone with “The Lady Is a Tramp,” but the Russian player hovered behind, ready to reclaim the keyboard for his side. Even the laughter, getting louder, came from isolated pockets, separated by untranslatable jokes. Only Liz, gliding in with a quick wink to Jake, seemed to bring the party together, suddenly drawing both sets of eager uniforms around her like Scarlett at the barbecue. Jake looked around the room, hoping to find Bernie and his armload of questionnaires, but got caught instead by a burly Russian covered with medals who knew English and, surprisingly, also knew Jake.
“You traveled with General Patton,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “I read your dispatches.”
“You did? How?”
“It’s not forbidden, you know, to read our allies.” He nodded. “Sikorsky,” he said, introducing himself, his voice accented but amused and sure of itself, an officer’s gift of rank. “In this case, I confess, we were interested to know where you were. A very energetic soldier, General Patton. We thought he might even reach Russia.” His face, fleshy but not yet sagging with jowls, creased with good humor. “I read your description of Camp Dora. Before the general pulled back to your own zone.”
“I don’t think he was thinking much about zones then. Just Germans.”
“Of course, as you say,” Sikorsky said gracefully. “You saw Nordhausen then. I saw it too. A remarkable place.”
“Yes, remarkable,” Jake said, the word absurdly inadequate. The underground rocket factory, two vast tunnels into the mountain crisscrossed with shafts, hollowed out by walking corpses in striped pajamas.
“Ingenious. To put it there, safe from bombs. How was it possible, we wondered.”
“With slave labor,” Jake said flatly.
“Yes,” the Russian said, nodding solemnly. “But still remarkable. We called it Aladdin’s cave.” Whole production lines, some of the V-2s still waiting, assembled, machine shops and tunnels full of parts, dripping with moisture from the rock. Bodies scattered in dark corners, because no one had bothered to clear them away in the frantic last days. “Of course,” the Russian went on, “there were no treasures in the cave when we got there. What could have happened, do you think?”
“I don’t know. The Germans must have moved it all somewhere.”
“Hmm. But where? You didn’t see anything yourself?”
Just the endless line of American trucks hauling their spoils west- crates of documents, tons of equipment, pieces of rockets on flatbeds. Seen, but not reported-the general’s request. When he became a friend to the army.
“No. I saw the gantries where they hanged the prisoners. That was enough for me. And the camps.”
“Yes, I remember. The hand you could not shake off.”
Jake looked at him, surprised. “You did read the piece.”
“Well, you know, we were interested in Nordhausen. Such a nuzzle. So much, to vanish like that. What is the expression? A disappearing trick.”
“Strange things happen in wartime.”
“In peace too, I think. At our Zeiss works, for example-four people.” He waved his fingers. “Like that, into thin air. Another disappearing trick.”
“Telling stories out of school, Vassily?” Muller said, joining them.
“Mr. Geismar has not heard about our trouble at the Zeiss factory. I thought perhaps he would be interested.”
“Now, Vassily, we’ll save that for the council meeting. You know, we can’t control what people do. Sometimes they vote with their feet.”
“Sometimes they are given transportation,” the Russian replied quickly. “Under nacht und nebel.” Night and fog, the old nighttime arrests.
“That was Himmler’s technique,” Muller said. “Not the American army’s.”
“Still, one hears these stories. And people vanish.”
“We hear them too,” Muller said carefully, “in the American zone. Berlin is full of rumors.”
“But if they are true? ”
“This one isn’t,” Muller said.
“Ah,” the Russian said. “So it’s a mystery. Like Nordhausen,” he said to Jake, then lifted his empty glass in a mock toast and politely headed away for a refill.
“What was that?” Jake said.
“The Russians are accusing us of snatching some scientists from their zone.”
“Which we wouldn’t do.”
“Which we wouldn’t do,” Muller said. “They would, though, so they always suspect the worst. They’re still kidnapping people. Mostly political. Not as bad as in the beginning, but they still do it. We Protest. So they protest.”
“Like having each other over for drinks.”
Muller smiled. “In a way.”
“And what’s Zeiss?”
“Optical works. Bomb sights, precision lenses. The Germans were way ahead of us there.”
“But not for long.”
Muller shrugged. “You never stop, do you? I can’t help you with this one. A few engineers took off. That’s all the story I know, if it is a story. Personally, I wouldn’t blame anyone for trying to get out of the Russian zone.”
“So our friend’s just blowing smoke.”
“Well, that’s what they do best. Don’t let him fool you. Just because he speaks English doesn’t mean he’s a friend.”
“Who is he exactly?”
“Vassily? General Sikorsky. He’s at the council. Does a little bit of everything, like all the comrades, but our counterintelligence boys know him, so I always thought he had a finger in that pie. Maybe even a kidnapping or two. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“So I should watch my back.”
“You?” Muller smiled, amused. “Don’t worry. Even the Russians wouldn’t want a reporter.”
Jake moved past the front parlor, where a group had begun singing, and down the hall toward the French doors in the back, open to let the smoke drift out. It was still light, the late light of a northern summer, and he looked at the muddy garden where grass and canvas chairs must have been, now trampled over and uprooted, like everything else in Berlin. There had been mud at Nordhausen too, so much that the trucks had slid in it, spattering the work party as they roared away with Aladdin’s treasures. No nacht und nebel, just gum-chewing T units, loading their convoys of steel prizes for the trip west. Where now? Somewhere over the Rhine, maybe even already in America, getting ready for the next war. If he asked now, he’d be told it had never happened. A disappearing trick. And he’d let that story go without a qualm, happy to oblige, because there was always another, until suddenly they were gone, all the big war stories, leaving nothing but rubble.
“Hey, Jackson,” Liz said, standing hesitantly in the doorway, as if she were afraid to interrupt. “What’s up?”
“Nothing. Just arguing with myself.”
“Who won?” she said, coming over.
Jake smiled. “My better instincts.”
“That must have been close.” She lit a cigarette, offering him one. “Catch any flak about today?”
“Not much. Nobody seems to think it’s anything special. They wonder why I care.”
“Why do you?”
Jake shrugged. “It’s an old superstition. If a story falls in your lap, it’s bad luck to waste it.”
“Old superstition.”
“Sorry about the camera.”
“No, I got it back. A nice Russian brought it to the press camp. Seemed to think I might go out with him, me being so grateful.”
“They didn’t use to ask, I hear.” He looked over at her. “I wish I’d used it. In case I need to prove he was shot.”
“They’re denying it?”
“No, but they’re not shouting about it either. I don’t know why not. A soldier shot in the Russian zone-you’d think they’d be jumping up and down. They spend half the time here squawking at each other.” He jerked a thumb toward the party. “So why not this time?”
Liz shook her head. “Nobody wants to raise a stink while the conference is on.”
“No, I know the army. Something’s-off. Nobody just gets shot. What was he doing here? You met him. He say anything to you on the plane?”
“No,” she said. “He was too busy trying to keep his stomach in one place.”
“I was thinking about that too. Why fly if you hate it so much? what was important enough to get him on a plane?”
“Oh, Jake, lots of people fly. Maybe he was ordered. He’s in the army, you know.”
“Was. Then why didn’t somebody meet him, if he was ordered? Remember that, at the airport?”
“Frankly, no.”
“Where was he? Everybody else had a ride.” He took a breath. There’s something.“
Liz sighed. “Okay, have it your way, Sherlock. You going to need some pictures? A little strong for Collier’s.”
Jake smiled. “Maybe. I have something else in mind too.” Liz raised her eyebrows. “Track down the old office staff, see what happened to them. Berlin stories. They’d use those pictures, if you’re interested.”
“You’re on. Old friends,” she said. “Not just one?”
“No,” he said, ignoring it. “Everybody I can find. I want to know what happened here, not just in the bunker. This other thing-I don’t know, maybe you’re right, maybe there’s nothing.” He paused, thinking. “Except the money. There’s always a story in money.”
Liz dropped her cigarette and rubbed it out. “Well, you keep arguing with yourself. Let me know how it comes out. Looks like I’m off,” she said, glancing through the door.
“Again?”
“Can I help it if I’m popular?” Before she could move away, a tall soldier, vaguely familiar, came to the door. “I’ll be with you in a sec,” she said to him, clearly not wanting him to come out. He lifted his beer bottle and turned back in to the house.
“The lucky guy?”
“Not yet. But he says he knows a good jazz club.”
“I’ll bet.” Jake looked through the door. “Ah,” he said, remembering. “The congressman’s driver. Liz.”
“Don’t be a snob,” she said, slightly flustered. “Anyway, he’s not a driver. He’s an officer.”
“And a gentleman.”
“Are any of you? At least this one doesn’t talk with his mouth full.”
Jake laughed. “That sounds like the real thing.”
“No,” she said, looking straight at him. “That’s when somebody comes back for you. Four years later. But he’ll do.”
He started to follow her inside, but a roar of laughter, like a blast of warm air, caught him at the door and turned him around. He wanted to be in his Berlin, sipping beer in some fading garden light, not in this odd pocket of Allied goodwill, glasses clinking like fencing swords. But that Berlin had been gone for years, packed away with the garden lanterns into cellars. ‹›He crossed the garden and opened the back gate. A footpath, not wide enough to be an alley, fed into the next street. All the houses were quiet-no dinner conversation coming through the windows, no radio-as if they were hunkered down, waiting for the party noise in Gelferstrasse to become a brawl, another raid that might pass over. In the silence you could hear your feet.
He turned down one of the narrow roads that led to the institute grounds, where the streets were named for scientists, not generals and Hohenzollerns. Farradayweg. Emil had worked here, miles away from Pariserstrasse, in his own world. The district still had the leafy enclave feel of a university, but now windows were knocked out, the chemistry building half charred, a roof gone. At the far end of the street he could see lights in a modern brick building, but the institute itself was dark. Still, the main building was standing. Thielallee. A big folly of a build-ing, spiked round turrets on each corner like Kaiser helmets. Pickel-haubes. He walked up the steps to look more closely. Maybe it was still operational, somewhere he could ask tomorrow.
“ Nein, nein!” Jake started. In the quiet, a voice as surprising as a shot. He turned. An old man walking a scrawny dog, wearing a jacket and a tweed hunter’s hat, as if he were expecting the summer evening to turn chilly. The dog made a noise, almost a growl, then leaned against the man’s leg, too listless to make the effort. The man wagged his finger at Jake, correcting him, then pointed to the brick building across the, intersection. “Kommandatura,” he said loudly, pointing again. “Kommandatura,” each syllable pronounced slowly, instructions to a lost foreigner.
“No, I was looking for the institute,” Jake said in German.
“Closed,” the man said automatically, but now it was his turn to start, surprised to hear German.
“Yes. Do you know when it opens in the morning?”
“It doesn’t open. It’s closed. Kaput.” He dipped his head, reflex manners. “Forgive me. I thought-an American. I thought you were looking for the Kommandatura. Come, Schatzie.”
“The Berlin Kommandatura?” Jake said, coming down before he could move away. “That’s it?” He looked toward the brick building, now taking in the flags, the windows with lights burning. Thin square columns to give it an entrance. “What was it before?” The dog began sniffing at his leg, so Jake leaned over and patted her, a gesture that seemed to surprise the old man more than his speaking German.
“An insurance company,” the man answered. “Fire insurance. It was a joke, you know. The one building that didn’t burn.” He looked ‹›down at the dog, still sniffing Jake’s hand. “Don’t worry, she won’t trouble you. Not so much energy these days. It’s the food, you see. I have to share my ration with her, and it’s not enough.” Jake stood up, noticing now the man’s own skinny frame, a heartless illustration of the old saw that owners resembled their pets. But the scraps at Gelferstrasse were blocks away. Instead he took out a pack.
“Cigarette?”
The old man took it and bowed. “Thank you. You don’t mind if I save it for later?” he said, carefully tucking it into his pocket.
“Here. Save that one. Smoke this,” Jake said, suddenly wanting company.
The man looked at it, amazed at his windfall, then nodded and bent over to the lighter. “You are about to see something interesting- a cigarette in Berlin actually being smoked. It’s another joke. One sells to another, and another, but who smokes them?” He inhaled, then leaned his hand against Jake’s upper arm. “Forgive me. A little dizziness. Thank you. How is it that you speak German?” he said, making conversation, his tongue set loose by tobacco.
“I lived in Berlin before the war.”
“Ah. It’s not the best, you know, your German. You should study.” A voice from a classroom.
Jake laughed. “Yes,” he said, then nodded toward the man’s pocket. “How much will you get for it?”
“Five marks, maybe. It’s for her.” He looked down at the dog. “I’m not complaining. Things are as they are. But it’s difficult, to see her like this. How can you feed a dog, they say, when people are hungry? But what should I do? Let her die, an innocent? Who else is so innocent in Berlin? That’s what I say to them-when you’re innocent, I’ll feed you too. That shuts them up. They’re the worst, the golden pheasants.”
Jake looked at him, lost now, wondering if he’d found not a man in the street but a crank. “Golden pheasants?”
“The big party members. Now, of course, they know nothing. You brought this on us, I say to them, and you want to eat? I’d rather feed a dog. A dog.”
“So they’re still around.”
The old man smiled crookedly. “No, there are no Nazis in Berlin. Not one. Only Social Democrats. So many, all those years. How could the party have survived with so many against them? Well, it’s a question.” He took another drag and stared at the glowing tip. “All Social Democrats now. The bastards. They threw me out.” He looked toward the institute building. “Years of work. I’ll never make it up now, never. It’s all kaput.”
“You’re a Jew?”
He snorted. “If I were a Jew I’d be dead. They had to leave right away. The rest of us, they waited, hoping we would join, then it was an order-party member or out. So I was out. I really was a Social Democrat.” He smiled. “Of course, you may not believe me. But you can check the records. 1938.”
“You were at the institute?” Jake said, interested now.
“Since 1919,” he said proudly. “They had places, you see, after the influenza, so I was lucky. It counted for something then, just to be here. Well, those days. I remember when we got the measurements from the eclipse. For Einstein’s theory,” he said, a teacher explaining, catching Jake’s blank expression. “If light had mass, then gravity would bend the rays. Starlight. The eclipse made it possible to measure. Einstein said it would be 1.75 seconds of an arc, the angle. And do you know what it was? 1.63. So close. Can you imagine? In that one minute, everything changed. Everything. Newton was wrong. The whole world changed, right here in Berlin. Right here.” He extended his arm toward the building, his voice following it in some private reverie. “So, then what? Champagne, of course, but the talk. All night talking. We thought we could do anything-that was German science. Until the gangsters. Then down the drain-”
“I had a friend at the institute,” Jake said, breaking in before the old man could drift further. “I’m trying to locate him. That’s why- perhaps you knew him. Emil Brandt?”
“The mathematician? Yes, of course. Emil. You were his friend?”
“Yes,” Jake said. His friend. “I was hoping someone would know where he is. You don’t-?”
“No, no, it’s many years.”
“But do you know what happened to him?”
“That I couldn’t say. I left the institute, you see.”
“And he stayed,” Jake said slowly, piecing together dates. “But he wasn’t a Nazi.”
“My friend, anyone who was here after 1938-” He stopped, seeing Jake’s face, and looked away. “But perhaps he was a special case.” He dropped his cigarette. “Thank you again. I must say good evening now. The curfew.”
“I knew him,” Jake said. “He wasn’t like that.”
“Like what? Goering? Many people joined, not just the swine. People do what they have to do.”
“You didn’t.”
He shrugged. “And what did it matter? Emil was young. A fine mind, I remember that. Numbers he could see in his head, not just on paper. Who can say what’s right? To give up your work for politics? Maybe he loved science more. And in the end-” He paused, looking again at the building, then back at Jake. “You disturb yourself over this. I can see it. Let me tell you something, for the price of a cigarette. The eclipse? In 1919? The Freikorps were fighting in the streets then. I myself saw bodies, Spartakists, in the Landwehrkanal. Who remembers now? Old politics. Footnotes. But in that building we changed the world. So what’s important? A party card? I don’t judge your friend. We are not all criminals.”
“Just the golden pheasants.”
A mild smile, conceding the point. “Yes. Them I don’t forgive. I’m not yet a saint.”
“What does it mean, anyway? Golden pheasants?”
“Who knows? Bright feathers-the uniforms. The wives left in fur coats, before the Russians came. Maybe it was that they flew out of the bushes as soon as they heard the first shots. Ha,” he said, the joke for himself. “Maybe that’s why there are no Nazis in Berlin.” He stopped and looked again at Jake. “It was a formality, you know. Just a formality.” He tipped his hat. “Good night.” ‹›Jake stood for a minute in front of the gloomy institute, unsettled. Emil must have joined. There wouldn’t have been any exceptions. But why did it surprise him? Millions had. A formality. Except Jake hadn’t known. All that time, something unsaid. A pleasant man with gentle eyes, quiet at parties, diffident, who saw numbers in his head-someone Jake never thought about at all. Not a Nazi, one of the good Germans. Standing with his arm around Lena. Had she known? How could he not tell her? And how could she stay with him, knowing? But she had.
It was getting dark, so he started down Thielallee. A jeep had pulled up in front of the Kommandatura, dropping off two soldiers, who hurried up the stairs with briefcases. New politics, soon to be as old as the Freikorps. What was important? People do what they have to do. She had stayed. Jake had left. That simple. Except Emil wasn’t simple anymore, which changed things. Had she known, those afternoons when they drew the shades to keep Berlin outside?
Jake felt suddenly disoriented, his mental map redrawn like the city’s streets, no longer where they were supposed to be. When he turned right off Thielallee, he saw, confused, that he was literally lost. The side street didn’t connect back to Gelferstrasse as he’d thought it would. And your German isn’t the best either anymore, he thought to himself, smiling. But he had never known this part of town; the streets here had always gone this way. It was the other Berlin, the one he had known, where you now needed a compass to find your way, some needle pulled by gravity, strong enough to bend starlight. Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter