A Good German Read online

  “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 leane
d 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

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Almost all the other buildings in Elssholzstrasse had been knocked out, so the Control Council headquarters stood even larger now. A massive hulk of Prussian stone,
its grim streetfront must have seemed an appropriate way station in the old court days, when the judges inside, party members all, had sentenced their victims to worse prisons. The main entrance, however, around the driveway into Kleist Park, presented a lighter face, tall windowed doors flanked by carved floating angels who looked down across what had been a formal lawn bordered with hedges toward two symmetrical colonnades at the other end, an unexpected piece of Paris. The whole place was noisy with activity-cars crunching on the gravel, a work party repairing the roof, banging tiles-like a country house getting ready for a big weekend party. Four bright new Allied flags had been hung over the entrance; 82nd Airborne guards in white spats and shiny helmets were posted at the doorway. Even the dusty grounds were being tidied up, raked by a detachment of German POWs, the letters stenciled on their backs, while a handful of bored GIs kept watch, standing around idly and taking the sun. Jake followed a group of husky Russian women in uniform through the chandeliered hall and up a grand marble staircase, an opera house entrance. He was met, surprisingly, by Muller himself.

  “I thought you might like a look around,” Muller said, heading them down the corridor. “We’re still trying to get things in shape. Place took a fair amount of damage.”

  “Maybe not enough, given what it was.”

  “Well, we have to use what we can. Biggest place we could find. Over four hundred rooms, they say, although I don’t know who’s counting. Maybe they threw in a closet or two. Of course, only part of it’s usable. This is where the council will sit.” He opened the door to a large chamber, already converted to a meeting room with long tables arranged in a square. In each corner, near their respective flags, were desks with shorthand typewriters for recording secretaries. A stack of ashtrays and notepads sat on one table, waiting to be distributed.

  “Nobody’s been here yet,” Muller said. “You’re the first, if that means anything to you.”

  Jake looked around the empty room, feeling he was back at the Cecilienhof, counting chimneys. “No press section?”