Leaving Berlin: A Novel Read online

  “Nothing. Has there been some trouble with Markus?”

  “No, no,” Martin said quickly. “It’s just something—to know.”

  Alex looked at him. Part of the air he breathed.

  And then suddenly, over Martin’s shoulder, he saw the lipstick, a tiny splash of red across the room, and she was there. He stopped listening. Martin was talking, his mouth moving, the whole room now just some indistinct hum. Lipstick, a plain white blouse, bright against the crowd of drab cardigans. And now she was turning her head, facing him, her eyes skimming over shoulders, finding his. What had he thought it would be like? Blood rushing through him, a purely physical reaction. He had wondered whether he would recognize her, whether the years had worn her away. But blood rushed through him, stopping up his ears, and they were looking at each other and what he felt was the secrecy of that summer, when it had been just the two of them, all these people oblivious, not even audible. Talking with her eyes, the way she had done that night at the house. My God. I never thought I would see you again. Do I look the same? I was afraid. What you would think. So many years. But we’re here, aren’t we? Both. Look at you. I remember everything. From that time. Do you? A sudden welling in the eyes. Don’t say anything. Not yet. Just keep looking. One more minute. Nobody sees us.

  Then someone touched her arm, drawing her away from his gaze and she turned her head back, now only a side glimpse to Alex, something she’d done in Pomerania, the secret between them, while Elsbeth primped and Fritz drank and nobody knew. So close they could speak in glimpses. And now it was all here again, the hot afternoons with the smell of the fields, hiding in the dunes, the taste of her. He kept staring until she looked around again, then away, as if she knew what he was seeing, her head thrown back, his face between her legs.

  A man’s back, in gray uniform, cut her off. The Russian? Not alone after all. The look maybe the only private conversation they’d have all night.

  “Herr Meier—” Martin’s voice came back.

  “Sorry. I’ve just seen somebody,” he said, turning to go.

  “You don’t want the toilet? It’s there.” Holding out his arm.

  “Oh, the toilet. Yes.” How long had he been dreaming, not listening? Her hair was longer, not bobbed, but still the color of straw.

  In the men’s room he had to wait in line, the others smoking and grumbling, already unsteady from vodka. When he washed his hands, he looked up in the mirror. A conversation in a glance. What if it hadn’t happened at all, the words in his head just what he wanted her to say? He splashed a little cold water under his eyes. Remember why you’re here. Go and meet the Russian.

  “You see who’s here? That little shit Engel.” Two men behind him, wiping their hands, thinking they were whispering, not alcohol loud.

  “Ulbricht’s ears. Everything goes straight to him. They’re worse than the Russians.”

  “Careful,” the first said, an elbow and a nod toward a closed stall.

  Alex kept looking at the mirror, the face he had now, not the one she’d known. Different people. The words in his head.

  A boy handed him a towel. “Herr Meier.”

  Alex turned. The bellhop from the Adlon.

  “Hello. You’re working here too?”

  “Something extra. When they have parties.”

  The other men who had been washing left, now just someone peeing in a stall. The boy started brushing the back of Alex’s jacket.

  “You’re enjoying Berlin?”

  “Yes, of course.” Saying nothing.

  “There is so much to see,” he said without irony, a tourist brochure, so that for a second Alex thought he was making a joke. “You have been to Volkspark Friedrichshain perhaps?”

  Alex looked up into the mirror.

  “They are building a mountain there.”

  “A mountain?” Alex said, confused.

  “Yes, with the rubble. Over the flak tower. Some day soon, just trees and grass. It’s interesting to see.”

  Alex kept looking at the mirror. The man flushed the toilet.

  “Go tomorrow,” the boy said under the sound, no ambiguity now, looking at each other in the mirror. “The Fairy Tale Fountain.” He gave a final whisk with the brush as the other man came to the sink and turned.

  “Here,” Alex said, reaching into his pocket for a tip.

  “No, it’s not allowed,” the boy said.

  “One good thing about Socialism, eh?” the man said, soaping his hands.

  The boy had turned away, busying himself with the towels. Not much older than Peter.

  * * *

  “So. Another admirer who wants to meet you.” Brecht, now wreathed in cigar smoke. “Matthias Fritsch,” he said, presenting a bald man. “How can a man have so many readers when his books are banned? So maybe he hasn’t read them really.”

  “Every one, I assure you,” Fritsch said, taking Alex’s hand. “A pleasure.”

  “Thank you,” Alex said, distracted, still rattled by the message in the men’s room. Tomorrow.

  “Contraband literature,” Brecht said. “The only kind that’s worth reading. It’s an idea. You could do something with that.”

  “You could,” Fritsch said.

  Alex noticed Markus, still there. “Markus Engel,” he said, introducing him. “A friend from the old days.”

  Markus bowed, visibly pleased, but the others barely took him in, not someone in their world.

  “Matthias is at DEFA,” Brecht said. “Very important. Close to Janka. So maybe useful to you. You see how I arrange things? And for just a small commission.”

  “How small?” Fritsch said, an old familiarity. “He says it’s a business for whores, and now who plays the pimp?”

  “I said capitalism makes us whores. The film business, just more so.”

  Alex was only half following this. Capitalism as a brothel was a Brecht conceit he’d heard before, and it struck him that what Brecht had really been in exile from all these years was not Berlin, but the twenties, with their tart, almost thrilling nihilism. Now that the worst had actually happened, just outside, his cynicism sounded like posturing, dated.

  “But perhaps we can tempt you,” Fritsch said to Alex.

  Alex held up his hands. “Books only.”

  “Come see us anyway,” Fritsch said. “Babelsberg. So much damage, all the soundstages, but now a few are working again. I’ll give you a tour.”

  “Wonderful films,” Brecht said. “Boy meets tractor.”

  “He never changes,” Fritsch said, indulgent. “Some good work too. Serious.”

  “Boy loses tractor,” Brecht said, impish.

  “I’d like that,” Alex said, polite.

  And then she was coming toward them, here, not a memory. How did they greet each other? A social kiss? A hug? Everyone watching. Even Markus, still hovering at the edge of the circle.

  But Irene knew. She took his hands and swept them up in hers, holding them, a gesture as welcoming as a hug without its intimacy.

  “My old friend,” she said, voice husky. The same voice. “So many years.”

  “So you know our Irene,” Fritsch said.

  “Yes,” Alex said, feeling her hands, touching.

  She was smiling, not the stare of a few minutes ago, something for the room, reaching for her old lightness.

  “Do I look so different?”

  Alex shook his head, playing with her. “No, the same.”

  But she wasn’t the same. Up close he could see the years, the sparkling eyes duller now, worn. Her face was thinner and yet somehow fuller, the skin slack under her chin, a little puffy.

  “You see, Sasha?” she said to the Russian next to her. “It must be true. He knows me longer than anybody.”

  “I believe it,” he said genially, then offered his hand. “Alexander Markovsky. Welcome to Berlin.”

  “Two Alexanders. All my men Alexanders. So confusing. So, Sasha, Alex,” she said, pointing in turn.

  Markus shifted on hi
s feet.

  “Markus, you’re here too? How nice.” She held out her hand. “Alex, you remember Kurt’s brother?”

  “We’ve just been talking.”

  “Oh, about old times?” she said airily, but wanting to know.

  “What happened to everyone,” Alex said. “It’s such a long time.”

  “Not always a pleasant story,” Markus said.

  “Who said history would be pleasant?” Brecht said, drawing on the cigar stub, still going.

  “But a homecoming is pleasant,” Markovsky said, steering back to Alex.

  “Yes, and now famous,” Irene said. “My old friend.” The voice husky again as she repeated the phrase.

  “An honor for the Kulturbund,” Martin said.

  “But if you’re an old friend,” Fritsch said to Irene, “get him to come work for us.”

  “Ouf, use my influence. What influence?” Then, looking up at Alex, “He doesn’t listen to me now. It’s too long ago.” Two conversations, one for the room.

  “He will. Everyone does what Irene says,” Fritsch said, party chat.

  “It’s better. In the end,” Markovsky said, the same easy tone.

  Alex looked at him. Fleshy, but not fat, blunt hands. A wife in Moscow. Trying to be pleasant, not an occupier, the horrors of ’45 someone else’s bad behavior. Holding Irene’s arm in his, her protector. What had it been like, at the mercy of the Russians? Frau, komme. Sometimes several in one night, gangs of them.

  “It’s not true,” Irene said. “No one does what I say.”

  “I will,” Brecht said, dipping his head.

  “Good. Then get me a ticket for Courage, yes? Opening night. Already people say it’s impossible.”

  “Ah, for that you have to ask Helene,” Brecht said.

  “You see?” Irene said. “No one.”

  “You work together?” Alex said to Fritsch.

  “Yes. Well, not so much anymore. But during the war—”

  “Kolberg. We worked together on Kolberg. My God.”

  Alex waited.

  “Goebbels’s last big production,” Markus said, intending a barb, but instead prompting a survivor’s nostalgia.

  “How crazy was that time,” Fritsch said. “The Allies are advancing and we’re staging battles. Uniforms. Cannons. Heinrich George in the lead—his salary alone. And the bombing is going on round the clock then.”

  “And no film stock,” Irene said.

  “No. And what does she do? She tells the director to keep shooting anyway. So week after week we shot scenes but there’s nothing in the camera.”

  “Why?” Markovsky said.

  “The crew,” Irene said. “They would have been drafted. To defend Berlin. But as long as we’re shooting, they’re in an essential industry. Essential. Kolberg. Well, so at least it was good for that.”

  “You saved their lives,” Fritsch said.

  “Well, not me.”

  “It was a propaganda film?” Markus said.

  “They were all propaganda films,” Fritsch said. “It was wartime. Even Zarah Leander films—propaganda. The wife waiting at home? How many did? And Kolberg? A German victory. Just around the corner. Except when it opened—January, that last January of the war—there were no theaters left, almost none. All bombed. So all that expense—”

  “You found the stock then to finish?” Markus said.

  “It was already finished. We just kept filming to save the crew. She might have been shot,” Fritsch said. “So it was a great thing, what she did.”

  “Oh—” Irene said, waving this off.

  “Your husband was in the crew, yes?” Markus said. “Makeup, someone told me.”

  “That’s right,” she said, looking at him.

  “Maybe that explains the lipstick,” he said. “So difficult to get now. But maybe you had a good supply. From the old days. Your husband.”

  “No,” she said, touching her lip. “This? A present.”

  “Yes, a present,” Markovsky repeated, aware finally of Markus’s tone.

  Markus took a step backward, as if someone were about to raise a hand to him, his body wound tight.

  “Of course,” he said. “Lipstick wouldn’t last so long, would it?” Not sure how to walk away from it.

  Brecht, who’d been quiet, said, “Thank God for the black market. Where would our women be without it?”

  “Bert,” Irene said quickly, darting her eyes toward Markovsky, “don’t be silly. Sasha doesn’t go on the black market. It’s from Russia.”

  But Markovsky missed most of this, focused now on Markus. “I’m sorry, you are—?”

  “Markus Engel.” A military response, erect, without the salute.

  “Ah, K-5. Under Mielke, yes?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Markus said, both pleased and wary that Markovsky knew who he was.

  “What happened this morning?” Meant to be an aside, but loud enough for Alex to hear.

  “We’re investigating,” Markus said, voice low, reluctant, waiting to be dressed down.

  “Such carelessness,” Markovsky said, in charge. “Whose idea was that? And now the British. Making protests. All day, on the phone. Directly to Maltsev. You can imagine how pleased he is. So who answers for that? Formal protests.”

  “About what?” Alex said, unable to resist.

  “Oh,” Markovsky said, turning, checking himself. “The usual foolishness. Our allies refuse to accept the reality of the situation here, so they like to make difficulties. Isn’t that right, Engel?” The tone dismissive, a question to a servant.

  “Yes, Major. Exactly.”

  Alex watched, fascinated, as Markus looked away, embarrassed, then back to Irene, who had seen this, then finally to Markovsky again, dismayed at his own impotence.

  “But usually it’s not the British,” Markovsky said, making the conversation general. “In the end, realists. Not like our American friends. You were a long time there.”

  “And an even longer time here. Before,” Alex said smoothly. “It’s good to be back.”

  “It’s good to have you,” Markovsky said, playing host.

  Markus glanced at Alex, annoyed, as if Markovsky had slipped his arm through Alex’s, one more protected, off-limits.

  “I must say good night,” Markus said, formal.

  “I never see you,” Irene said, giving her hand, the only one who seemed to notice his leaving. “So busy you are always.”

  “What did you think of America?” Markovsky said to Alex.

  “They took me in. When the Nazis— You don’t forget that.”

  “And then threw you out again,” Brecht said.

  Alex smiled. “And then threw me out.”

  “Well, so it’s good for us,” Markovsky said, making an effect. “And now back with old friends. You were sweethearts maybe?” Half teasing.

  “No, never sweethearts,” Irene said, looking at Alex. “Something else.” Then, quickly, “Anyway Elsbeth was the pretty one. So there was no chance for me.” She looked again at Alex.

  “Elsbeth,” Markovsky said.

  “My sister.”

  “Two of them,” Markovsky said, shaking his head, an affectionate joke.

  “And Alex, you know, was so serious. A writer, even then. You had to watch what you said. You know we’re in a book? My father said it was another family, but it was us.”

  “And what were you like? In the book,” Markovsky said, familiar.

  “Like I am. Well, like I was. A long time ago now.”

  “People don’t change.”

  “No? Maybe. But the world does.” She looked at Alex. “You remember the old house.”

  “I went to see it. This morning.”

  She nodded. “It’s sad, to think of it like that. But you know he sold it to the Nazis, so—”

  “To the Reichsbank. A man told me.”

  “Yes, the bank. So at least no one else ever lived there. Just us.”

  “Junkers,” Brecht said. “Are we suppo
sed to be sentimental?”

  “No, polite,” Markovsky said, turning to him.

  “Oh, Bert, he’s never polite,” Irene said easily. “Are you, darling? It’s part of his art.”

  Brecht took this and held on, a social lifesaver. “I still can’t get you a ticket,” he said, almost winking. “But what about a drink instead?”

  “A drink also,” Irene volleyed back, putting her finger on his chest.

  Brecht bowed, a waiter’s gesture, and left with Fritsch.

  “It’s just the way he talks,” Irene said to Markovsky. “And you know, he’s right. There’s no reason to be sentimental. I never liked the house anyway.”

  “But your family’s house—” Markovsky said, and Alex realized that it was part of her appeal for him, someone who’d known that life.

  “Ouf. It was like here,” she said, waving her hand. “A museum. But the country house I always liked. And now that’s gone too.”

  “Fritz sold it?” Alex said.

  “No. All the big farms were broken up. After the war. They just took it.”

  “Land reform,” Markovsky said, explaining, suddenly uncomfortable. “A more equitable distribution.”

  “Oh, I’m not blaming you. I’m sure it’s right—give the land to the people who farm it. My father would have sold it anyway, so what’s the difference? It would still be gone. Don’t worry, I forgive you,” she said, teasing.

  “She forgives me. I’m the politburo,” Markovsky said, but smiling, charmed.

  Alex looked at them, a life together he knew nothing about.

  “Major Markovsky, the telephone.” The bellboy from the Adlon, his eyes fixed on Markovsky, not even a glance to Alex. “They said urgent.”

  “Urgent. At this hour?” Markovsky said, checking his watch. “Excuse me a moment. There was some trouble this morning, so maybe it’s that.”

  “The phone is here,” the boy said, leading him away, still ignoring Alex.

  “So,” Irene said, her voice suddenly her own again, not at a party. “My God, what do I say to you? Why are you here? You leave America and everyone else wants to go there.”

  “I had to leave.”

  “And the whole world to choose, you come here? Who comes to Berlin?”

  “People,” he said, indicating the room. “Brecht.”