A Good German Page 6

“Hey, it’s Renate!” The boys back on the platform, surrounding them, Berlin closing in again. He tried to catch Lena’s eye, but she avoided him, hanging back with Emil, helping Hal pour champagne into cups. More drinks and jokes, Renate brazenly cadging a cigarette from a passing policeman with a flirtatious thank-you. Just to prove she could do it, while Hal looked on, appalled. With the train whistle, there was a final round of hugs, crushing the flowers. Emil shook Jake’s hand, looking relieved that the party was coming to an end.

  “Any news on the visa?” Jake said to Renate, embracing her.

  She shook her head. “Soon,” she said, not meaning it. Bright eyes, a head full of dark curls. The train attendant was closing doors.

  “Jacob.” Lena’s voice, then her face next to his, a formal kiss on each side, light, leaving only the smell of her skin.

  He looked at her, but there was nothing to say, not even her name, and the hands at his back were pushing him onto the train. He stood on the stairs as the train began to move, waving, hearing drunken auf wiedersehens, and when she took a step forward he thought for a second, wildly, that she would do it, run after the train and come with him, but it was only a step, a push from the crowd, so that the last thing he saw in Berlin was her standing still on the platform with Emil’s arm around her shoulder. ‹›The rubble women had stopped moving their pails, scrambling over the bricks to the middle of the building. One of them shouted down to the street, where another group picked up a stretcher from a cart and followed. Jake watched them lift a body out of the debris, turning their faces away from the smell, and swing it onto the stretcher as indifferently as if it were another load of bricks. The stretcher team plodded back, stumbling under the weight, then overturned it into a cart. A woman, her hair singed away. Where did they take the bodies? Some big potter’s field in the Brandenburg marshes? More likely a furnace to finish the burning. Renate would have died like that, her sharp eyes finally dulled. Unless she had somehow survived, become one of the living skeletons he’d seen in the camp, their eyes dull too, half alive. The crime so big that no one did it. But they’d kept records in the camps, the long roll calls. It was only here, under the bricks, that a numberless body could vanish without a trace.

  He ran over to the cart and looked down. A stocky, faceless body; not Lena, not anybody. He turned away. This was as pointless as Frau Dzuris. The living didn’t vanish. Emil had been at the KWI-they’d know something. Army records, if he’d been in the war. POW lists. All it took was time. She’d be somewhere, not on a cart. Maybe even waiting for him in one of Bernie’s questionnaires.

  Bernie, however, was out, called to an unexpected meeting, according to the message tacked on his office door, so Jake walked over to the press camp instead. Everyone was there, drinking beer and looking bored, the typing tables littered with Ron’s bland releases. Stalin had arrived. Churchill had called on Truman. The first plenary session would start at five. A reception had been arranged by the Russians.

  “Not much, is it, boyo?” Brian Stanley said, a full whiskey glass in his hand.

  “What are you doing here? Coming over to the other side?”

  “Better booze,” he said, sipping. “I had hoped for a little information, but as you can see—” He let one of the releases fall to the bar.

  “I saw you with Churchill. He say anything?”

  “ ‘Course not. But at least he said it to me. Special to the Express. Very nice.”

  “But not so nice for the others.”

  Brian smiled. “Mad as hornets, they are. So I thought I’d poke around here for a bit. Stay out of harm’s way.” He took another sip. “There’s no story, you know. Can’t even get Eden. We ought to just pack it in, and instead there’s tomorrow to worry about. Want to see what our lot’s handing out?” He reached into his pocket and passed over another release.

  “Three thousand linen sheets, five hundred ashtrays-what’s this?”

  “Preparation for the conference. Last blowout of the war, by the size of it. Try getting a story out of that.”

  “Three thousand rolls of toilet paper,” Jake said.

  “All from London. Now, where’ve they been hiding it, you wonder Haven’t seen decent loo paper in years.” He took back the sheet, shaking his head. “Here’s the one, a hundred and fifty bottles of button polish. Broke, but still gleaming.”

  “You’re not going to print this?”

  He shrugged. “What about you? Anything?”

  “Not today. I went into town. They’re still digging up bodies.”

  Brian made a face. “I haven’t the stomach, I really haven’t.”

  “You’re getting soft. It never bothered you in Africa.” ‹›“Well, that was the war. I don’t know what this is.” He took a sip from his glass, brooding. “Lovely to be back in Cairo, wouldn’t it? Sit on the terrace and watch the boats. Just the thing after this.” Drifting feluccas, white triangles waiting for a hint of a breeze, a million miles away.

  “You’d be in London in a week.”

  “I don’t think so, you know,” Brian said seriously. “It’s the boats for me now. ”

  “That’s the whiskey talking. When a man’s tired of London—” Jake quoted.

  Brian looked at the glass. “That’s when we were on the way up. I don’t want to see us go down. Bit by bit. It’s finished there too. Just the Russians now. There’s your story. And you’re welcome to it. I haven’t got the stomach anymore. Awful people.”

  “And there’s us.”

  Brian sighed. “The lucky Americans. You don’t need to count the loo paper, do you? Just streams out. What will you do, I wonder.”

  “Go home.”

  “No, you’ll stay. You’ll want to put things right. That’s your particular bit of foolishness. You’ll want to put things right.”

  “Somebody has to.”

  “Do they? Well, then, I anoint you, why not?” He put his hand on Jake’s head. “Good luck and God bless. I’m for the boats.”

  “Don’t you guys ever work?” A voice coming up from behind.

  “Liz, my darling,” Brian said, instantly hearty. “The lady with the lens. Come have a drink. I hear Miss Bourke-White’s on her way.”

  “Up yours too.”

  Brian laughed. “Ooo.” He got up from his stool. “Here, darling, have a seat. I’d better push off. Go polish my buttons. Probably the last time we get to sit at the high table, so we like to look our best.”

  “What’s he talking about?” she said, watching him walk away.

  “He’s just being Brian. Here.” Jake took out a match to light her cigarette.

  “What have you been doing?” she said, inhaling. “Holding up the bar?”

  “No, I went into town.”

  “God, why?”

  “Look at the message boards.” Charred bodies.

  “Oh.” She glanced up at him. “Any luck?”

  He shook his head and handed her a release. “The Russians are giving a banquet tonight.”

  “I know. They’re also posing.” She looked at her watch. “In about an hour.”

  “In Potsdam? Take me with you.”

  “Can’t. They’d have my head. No press, remember?”

  “I’ll carry your camera.”

  “You’d never get through. Special pass,” she said, showing hers.

  “Yes, I would. Just bat your baby blues. The Russians can’t read anyway. Come on, Liz.”

  “She won’t be in Potsdam, Jake,” she said, looking at him.

  “I can’t sit around here. It just makes it worse. Anyway, I still need to file something.”

  “We’re taking pictures, that’s all.”

  “But I’d be there. See it, at least. Anything’s better than this,” he said, picking up the release. “Come on. I’ll buy you that drink later.”

  “I’ve had better offers.”

  “How do you know?”

  She laughed and got up from the stool. “Meet me outside in five. If there’s any trouble,
I don’t know you. Understood? I don’t know how you got in the jeep. Serve you right if they hauled you away.”

  “You’re a pal.”

  “Yeah.” She handed him a camera. “They’re brown, by the way, not blue. In case you haven’t noticed.”

  Another photographer was at the wheel, so Jake crammed in the back with the equipment, watching Liz’s hair flying in the wind next to the aerial flag. They drove south toward Babelsberg, the old route to the film studios, and met the first Russian sentry on the Lange Brucke. He looked at the driver’s pass, pretending to understand English, and waved them through with a machine gun.

  The entire town had been cordoned off, lines of Russian soldiers posted at regular intervals up to Wilhelmplatz, which seemed to have got the worst of the bomb damage. They swung behind the square and then out the designated route along the Neuer Garten, the large villas facing the park wall looking empty but intact, lucky survivors. After Berlin, it was a haven, somewhere out of the war. Jake almost expected to see the usual old ladies in hats walking their dogs on the formal paths. Instead there were more Russians with machine guns, stretched along the lakeshore as if they were expecting an amphibious assault.

  The Cecilienhof was at the end of the park, a big heap of stockbroker Tudor with brick chimneys and leaded windows, an unexpected piece of Surrey on the edge of the Jungfernsee. There were guards posted at the park gates, more menacingly correct but no more thorough than the first set on the bridge, then a long gravel drive to the palace forecourt, where MPs and British soldiers mingled with their Russian hosts. They parked near a row of official black cars. Through the opening to the inner courtyard they could see hundreds of red geraniums planted in the shape of a huge Soviet star, an ostentatious display of property rights, but before Liz could photograph it a liaison officer directed them around the building to the lawn that fronted the lake. Here, on the terrace next to a small topiary garden, three wicker chairs had been set out for the picture session. A small army of photographers and newsreel cameramen were already in place, smoking and setting up tripods and shooting uneasy glances toward the patrolling guards.

  “As long as you’re here, you might as well be useful,” Liz said, handing Jake two cameras while she loaded a third. One of the guards came by to inspect the cases.

  “So where are they?”

  “Probably having a last-minute comb,” Liz said.

  He imagined Stalin in front of a mirror, smoothing back the sides of his hair for history.

  Then there was nothing to do but wait. He studied the building for details-the double-height bay windows with their view of the lake, presumably the conference room, the chimneys of patterned brick too numerous to count. But there was no story in any of it, just architecture. The lawn had been mowed, the hedges trimmed, everything as tidy as a set shipped down the road from the soundstages in Babelsberg. A few miles away, the rubble women were dumping bodies in a cart. Here a breeze was blowing in from the lake, the waves flashing in the sun like tiny reflectors. The view was lovely. He wondered if Crown Prince Wilhelm used to walk across the lawn, towel in hand, for a morning dip, but the past seemed as unlikely as Stalin’s comb. No sailboats now, just the Russian sentries standing back from the water, hands resting on their guns.

  Churchill was first. He came onto the terrace in his khaki uniform, holding a cigar and talking to a group of aides. Then Truman, jaunty in a gray double-breasted suit, trading jokes with Byrnes and Admiral Leahy. Finally Stalin, in a dazzling white tunic, his short frame dwarfed by a circle of guards. There were a few informal shots as they shook hands, then a flurry of taking seats, aides crowding around to settle them in. Churchill handed a soldier his cigar. Truman tugged at his jacket so it wouldn’t ride up as he sat. Had the places been decided beforehand? Truman was in the middle, his wire-rimmed glasses catching the light each time he turned his head from one to the other. Everyone smiling, casual, as if they were posing for a group shot at a class reunion. Truman crossed his legs, revealing a pair of ribbed silk socks. The cameras clicked.

  Jake turned when he heard the shout. Sharp, in Russian. Now what? A soldier at the lake’s edge was calling out, pointing at something in the water. Surprisingly, he waded in, wetting his boots, shouting again for help. On the terrace, some of the aides glanced toward the water, then turned back to the photographers, frowning at the interruption. Jake watched, fascinated, as the Russian soldiers began pulling a body to the shore. Another floater, like one of the bodies in the Landwehrkanal. But this one in uniform, indefinable at this distance. Still, more interesting than chimneys. He started down the lawn.

  No one stopped him. The other guards had left their posts and were running toward the body, confused, looking toward the palace for instructions. The first soldier, wet now to the knees, was pulling the body up on the mud. He dropped the lifeless arm, then grabbed the belt for better leverage and yanked, a final heave to the grass. Suddenly the belt gave way, and Jake saw that it was a kind of pouch, ripped now and spilling open, the wind from the lake catching bits of paper and blowing them over the grass. Jake stopped. Not paper, money, bills whirling up then floating in the air like hundreds of little kites. The sky, a surreal moment, filled with money.

  The Russians stood still for a second, amazed, then lunged for the bills, grabbing them out of the air. Another gust sent them higher so the guards now had to leap up, no longer soldiers but astonished children snatching candy. Everyone on the terrace stood to watch. A few of the Russian officers ran down to restore order, brushing past bills scattering across the lawn. They shouted to the guards, but no one listened, yelling instead to each other as they chased the flying paper, stamping the ground to hold down the bills, and stuffing them into their pockets. So much money, blowing like confetti. Jake picked one up. Occupation marks. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. So much money.

  Now the photographers began to break ranks and head for the lake too, until the Russian officers turned on them, holding them back with pointed guns. But Jake was already there. He went over to the body. An American uniform, the torn money belt lying in the mud, some of the notes drifting back into the water. But what was he doing here? Floating in the Russian zone to the most heavily guarded lawn in Berlin. Jake knelt down to the body. A face sickly white and puffy from the water, the tag chain at his neck hanging to the side. He reached for the tags, then stopped, thrown. No need. Not just any soldier. The shock of a corpse you knew. The boy on the flight from Frankfurt, white-knuckled, clasping the bench in fear, his fingers outstretched now, shriveled.

  It was then, stupefied, that Jake noticed the bullet hole, the dark matted fabric where the blood had been. Behind him men were still shouting in Russian, but suddenly he was back in one of those Chicago rooms, everything disrupted. The eyes were open. Only one riding boot, the other pulled away by the water. How long had he been dead? He felt the jaw, clenched tight. But there was no coroner to turn to, nobody dusting for prints. He felt the blunt tip of a gun in his back.

  “ Snell,” the Russian commanded, evidently his one word of German.

  Jake looked up. Another soldier, pointing a gun, was waving him away. As he stood, the other grabbed the camera, saying something in Russian. The first soldier poked the gun again until Jake raised his hands and turned around. On the terrace the Big Three were being hustled into the house, only Stalin still rooted to the spot, assessing, an anxious look like the one from the Chancellery steps. A sharp crack of rifle fire startled the air. A few birds bolted up out of the reeds. The men on the terrace froze, then hurried quickly into the building.

  Jake looked toward the sound of the shot. A Russian officer, firing into the air to stop the riot. In the silence that followed, the guards stood still, watching the rest of the money blow toward the Neuer Garten, sheepish now, afraid of what would follow, their perfectly arranged afternoon turned squalid, an embarrassment. The officers ordered them into line and took back the notes. Jake’s Russian pointed again to the house. Lieutenant Tully,
who was afraid of flying. Four Russians were picking him up, flinging the money belt onto his chest as if it were evidence. But of what? So much money.

  “Can I have my camera back?” Jake said, but the Russian yelled at him and pushed him forward with the gun, back to the photographers. The lawn was swarming with aides now, directing everyone back to the cars like tour leaders. Apologies for the disruption, as if Tully were a drunk who’d spoiled the party. The Russian guards watched, sullen, their one piece of luck blown away.

  “Sorry,” Jake said to Liz. “They took the camera.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot. What were you doing down there?”

  “It was the guy from the plane.”

  “What guy?”

  “Tully. The kid with the boots.”

  “But how-?”

  “Let’s go, let’s go.” A brusque MR “Fun’s over.”

  They were herded behind the others to the car park. Before they reached the gravel, Jake turned, looking back toward the lake.

  “What the hell was he doing in Potsdam?” he said to himself.

  “Maybe he’s with the delegation.”

  Jake shook his head.

  “Does it matter? Maybe he fell in the lake.”

  He turned to her. “He was shot.”

  Liz looked at him, then nervously back to the cars. “Come on, Jake. Let’s get out of here.”

  “But why Potsdam?” In the park, a few of the bills still bounced along the grass, like leaves waiting to be raked. “With all that money.”

  “Did you get any?”

  He uncrumpled the salvaged note in his hand.

  “A hundred marks,” Liz said. “Lucky you. Ten whole dollars.”

  But there’d been more. Thousands more. And a man with a bullet in his chest.

  “Come on, the others have gone,” Liz said.

  Back to the press camp to drink beer. Jake smiled to himself, his mind racing, no longer walking dazed through ruins. A crime. The way in. His Berlin story.

  II. Occupation

  CHAPTER THREE