Deadfall in Berlin

by Robert Alexander

  Chapter 5

  Frightened by what was hidden in my mind, I called my agent first thing the next morning and, dramatically feigning flu, finked out on the wiener commercial. He was none too pleased, but I assured him it would be even worse to have some vomity looking person sucking down a hot dog. Particularly in color. All right, all right, he said, and then mentioned something about a dairy council promo next month. Ah, I thought. The big time.

  Alecia was booked that day but squeezed me in during her lunch hour. I took a cab directly there, wasted no time going up. When she collected me from the waiting room, I smiled for the first time that morning. Beautiful Alecia. Sexy Alecia. Today: blue glasses pushed up on her brown hair and a dress of some krinkly yellow cotton. Very summery, not very modern. Kind of bland. If only she'd let me help her. Never mind that I was just in faded jeans and a simple blue shirt. I had great taste.

  “How do you feel today?” she asked as she shut her door.

  “Like shit,” I said, studying her green canvas shoes. Really dull. “I'm a wreck and I slept terribly. Hardly at all.” I lowered myself into the recliner. “So… what about yesterday? Was that real or what?”

  Alecia pursed her thin lips, sat down at her desk. “Hypnosis is an honest tool, Will, that tends not to falsify past data. It's very good at giving you information that has been suppressed or forgotten. In fact, that's the only problem I have with it—hypnosis can give you access to information before you're ready to process it.”

  “Case in point.”

  “Well, I have to say that's why I was concerned when you did an age regression on your own. You discovered something quite terrible that you weren't able to deal with.”

  “Okay,” I began, glaring at Miss Prissy. “But I don't have any choice now. I've opened the proverbial can of worms. If I don't find out what happened to my mother, I'll never have any piece of mind.”

  “That's right. So are you ready?”

  “No, I'm not ready! I'm scared as hell. Really scared.” I let out a deep sigh. “But I accept that I have to go back and look at some more things.”

  Alecia leaned forward, reached across that great expanse between us, and touched my knee. I shivered, wanted so much to take her by the hand.

  She said, “I understand, Will. Just let me say again that I'm here to help and guide you. I won't let anything happen to you in trance.”

  I stared at that simple yet elegant face, admired the swell of her breasts, wanted to pull her close to me. Did she suspect? Oh, Alecia, I thought, the only benefit of all this is the surplus of time with you.

  “Will?”

  I tensed, dragged myself from my fantasies. Leaning back, I took hold of the La-Z-Boy lever and rocketed my feet upward. I was of the kind that never poked one's toe in a cold pool, but just jumped in. Fuck it.

  “Let's go.”

  I settled back into the recliner, started on my own, ran ahead of her. One, I took a deep breath. Two, rolled my eyes up into my head while forcing my lids to remain open. Three, exhaled and slowly closed my eyes. I didn't really need Alecia's chant, for I was excellent at self-hypnosis. With a One, Two, Three and a roll of my eyes, I wouldn't be nervous entering a crowd of strangers or doing an audition or bouncing around on a choppy flight. I didn't know how it worked, only that hypnosis empowered me, tapped into more of my mind and enabled me to battle down the crud.

  Alecia chimed in a few moments later, counting, “One.”

  Her soft, steady voice started ticking away the numbers, and I mellowed even more. Having her direct my trance was like getting into bed—I could do it on my own, but it was so wonderful being tucked in. Especially by her. I hooked on her voice, sensed my defenses softening, my knots of anxiety slipping away. As she beckoned to my subconscious—“feel the tranquility slipping into you, sense the weight dropping away, watch yourself float higher and higher—the fear and tension that gripped my soul began to grow lazy and flaccid, and soon… soon I heard her far in the distance count “Ten,” and suddenly I was there in my own personal universe.

  “Oh, I like this.” I heard applause in my imagination. “Yes, this is very nice.”

  “Good” she cooed.

  I said it now honestly, calmly: “I have to go back to Berlin.”

  “If this is what you want.”

  “Yes.” Oh, absolutely. Without a doubt. “Not to that night, though. I can't. Not now. I'm too afraid. I want to go back to another day because there's something else that I need to remember. Have to remember.” Yes, Mama's gift. The reason I had done an age regression back at my apartment. “My mother's voice. I just want to hear her sing again—it was so reassuring—but… but like I said, I can't hear it anymore. It's not gone forever, is it? I haven't lost it for good, have I?”

  “Of course not, Will”

  “Really?”

  “Really. It's still within you, within the rings of your life. Don't worry.”

  I smiled. Trust Alecia. Trust yourself. It was in there somewhere. I knew what I wanted to hear, too. That song. I wanted to hear Mama's deep yet silky voice milk the words into music that captured both the sadness and the truth.

  “I want to hear her sing ‘Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “ ‘I still have a suitcase in Berlin.’ ”

  Floating in my trance I was suddenly awash with… sentiment. Yes, I was a complete and utter sentimental slob. I cried at movies and I cried because I never told my mother I loved her. I guessed that's what kept my emotions as raw as a freshly scraped knee. You know, rich and bright and painful.

  “There's only one thing,” I admitted. “A little technicality. That's a song that came out after the war. Obviously, I never heard my mother sing it, but I always wanted to. When I was a kid here in America I prayed she'd come in my dreams and sing it to me. But… she never did.”

  “That's all right, Will. Just remember that your imagination is transformational. It has the power to alter and heal your psyche.” Softly, she said, “It would be very nice for you to hear your mother sing that song about Berlin, wouldn't it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  No Freud here, I thought with a grin. Alecia was pure Jungian. Actual events took a back seat to creative visualizations and pretend dialogues—the fuel of the imaginal unconscious.

  Oh, Mother, I thought. Not your scream, not your plea for life, but your voice in song. In melody. That's what my hungry spirit needs. Ich han noch<…

  “Are you ready to go back?”

  “Yes, and I want to hear her voice.”

  “That's good, Will. Just focus on that. You are already in a trance, a good trance, so we can begin right—”

  “But the song!” I demanded.

  “Focus, Will, then make a simple request and trust in your imagination. Trust in your love for your mother. Now just go back… back… back…”

  Trust? Love? Suddenly I became terribly nervous. Alecia didn't know the half of it. Wait! I wanted to shout. Stop! Hold everything! But… but… burr. I shivered. Trembled.

  “Will, what's happening now?”

  “I'm cold.”

  “What else?”

  “I don't know. I don't know. It's just so chilly in here.”

  “Okay, let that build. Let that sense grow. Follow it. You're in a very nice hypnotic state. Trust that state of hypnosis. Let go of any fears behind it. Just let that feeling build very deeply, and as that builds it occurs to you that you've had that sensation before.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Of course you have. Now all you have to do is go back in time to when you sensed this before.”

  I felt my imagination building to warp speed. “Oh, oh my God!”

  “It's all right, Will. You're doing very well.”

  That feeling. That chill. Cold. Damp. Dark. Yes, I knew exactly when and where. I felt myself hurling through space, through time, and then all at once my mind fixed on exactly one day, one place. The coordinates loc
ked in, and all of sudden—Oh, Christ!—I was there.

  “Oh.”

  I was cold because it was late winter and damp, and Mother and Erich and I had snuck into the ruins of the zoo and had been feeding Siam. Suddenly, the pre-warning sirens had gone off and everyone rushed to the shelters. A major raid. A thousand planes. American planes because it was daytime. There wasn't enough time to make it home to our underground bar, and so we charged out of the ruined zoo, past the Bahnhof Zoo, and on and on with the throngs toward that towering, massive castle of concrete, the Zoo Bunker.

  “Willi, you're shivering. Is anything the matter?”

  “It's very dark in the bunker and my blue sweater is all wet. I can't see.”

  “Use all your senses. You have all of them within your power. You can feel and…”

  It was as black as a cave in there because the first of the planes had already passed. Evidently they had struck something major, for the lights had flickered and died.

  “. . .see. . .”

  An old man next to me struck a match and the shelter came to ghostly life. I gazed around. I sat on a wooden bench crammed into the first level of the Zoo Bunker with scores of people—mothers and children, mainly. Some older folk, too. Some soldiers—a few who were home on leave, many who were home permanently on crutches or in wheelchairs. Next to me was the old man who held the match and next to him was an old woman, both leftovers from the days of the Kaiser. In the flickering light, the old woman reached into a bag and took out two pots. One went on her husband's head, the other on hers. Make-shift helmets. And then the woman took out gauze spectacles for the both of them. I sat there, me much smaller, quite curious, understanding, staring at them. So they were expecting the worst. Phosphorous bombs. Did they also have damp rags to cover their mouths? But why? This was the Zoo Bunker. It was more than six stories tall and the concrete walls were meters thick. The windows could be sealed shut. There was a ventilation system. And there were even flak guns on the roof. If we weren't safe here, then—

  Someone on another bench screeched, “Put out that match—it's using up the air!”

  The old man with the pot on his head puckered his lips in an “O” and blew. The room was as dark as my worst dreams.

  “Erich?” I called out into the nothingness. “Erich, where are you?”

  I stood up, started to squirm and feel my way through the crowd. By the time Mother, Erich and I had made it to the bunker, there had already been a huge crowd queuing up. Mother had nudged my brother and I ahead, past the sea of parked bicycles and prams parked out front, and right into the mass of knees and skirts and purses and briefcases. But the crowd had been like a strainer, first catching our mother. Then me. And only allowing little Erich to reach the front.

  “Erich?”

  He must be downstairs. Erich with the miniature crutch who must have been carried along like a twig into the ground floor. I, on the other hand, had been pushed up the curving stairs onto the next floor.

  “Young man, sit down,” said a man's voice that rose out of the dark as if from a scratchy record. I couldn't see a thing. My little brother didn't call back. All I could sense were feet, hands, parcels. Knees. And hot, moist garlicky breath.

  The next wave of bombs churned toward us like a mighty storm that one sees rolling across a lake. Big heavy thuds. Huge things that fell from the sky and shook the earth. They were getting louder. Closer. But that was okay. If you could hear them, everyone said, you were all right. As long as you could hear the bombs, you were safe. The flak guns atop the bunker started their fire. ACK-ACK! ACK-ACK-ACK!

  I heard a distant laugh and giggle.

  “Mama?”

  I knew she was in here. I turned my head in the lightless tomb. Where was she? Why didn't she answer? I shoved my way through the crowds.

  “Mama!”

  The thundering bombs were striking only blocks away. The noise seemed to be coming straight for us. Where was my brother? Where was my mother? There were people all around me, sitting unseen in the dark Zoo Bunker. Unseen, unknown faces. All strangers. When would the lights come on? Would the bombs get us? Siam! Siam the elephant was out there! Somehow he's survived that hellish night when the Brits had smashed the zoo and his world had caught fire. But this time, this time they might get him!

  Just then I heard the vents being cranked shut. That meant there were indeed fires outside. Oh, Siam… ACK-ACK! ACK-ACK-ACK!

  I heard a familiar laugh.

  “Mama?”

  I groped through the dark. Why couldn't I picture her? Why couldn't I remember the shape of her face, the sweet flowery fragrance of her skin? And her voice—Dear Lord, what did her voice sound like? Had I forgotten her? No, I thought. Don't let me lose her. Don't let me lose her!

  “Mama, sing to me! Please!” I begged.

  Suddenly a deep voice began to snake through the bunker, and we were all quiet. Yes, we were all brought to peace by this haunting thing: the silky-rough voice of a woman who had laughed too much, whispered too much, loved too much. I caught my breath, bit my lip. I wanted to cry, but held myself in check. No, I couldn't make a peep because all I wanted to hear was my mother! And it was her, and her tones curled over me, through me, into me.

  She sang, “Ich hab noch einen Koffer in Berlin…”

  The lyrics came slow and loved, pained and charmed, and did I there in the bunker hear not the bombs outside or the ack-ack of the flak guns but a muted trumpet, slow strings, and a twinkle of a piano? Whatever, I knew once again that my mother had told the truth, that they had in the early thirties flocked to the cabaret to hear her and see her long legs and swollen breasts. So many stories. So much champagne. She had lived Berlin to its fullest, a rising cabaret star decked out in sequins and feather boas and little else. But then… then He came to power, the cabarets were closed and my mother was put away like a nasty jar of decadent French jam.

  “… Doch ich denk, wenn ihr auch lacht, heut noch an Berlin.”

  Her chant continued—“Even if you laugh, I still think of Berlin”—lazy and mystical, and as she sang the charms of our Berlin, compared us to Paris and the Rhine, today's bombs rained over us, a forecast that any of us could have given. As Mama shielded us with her tune, the Ku-damm was hit hard, reducing ruin to rubble, while the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche—the memorial church—was cracked like a nut by three bombs, and Siam was spared. And as my mother sang in the Zoo Bunker and row after row of strangers sat silently drinking in her fresh song, the bombs passed by, whooshed overhead like the fiercest of thunderstorms that faded into the distance without having left a single deathly drop on us. Then all at once there was a surge of happiness: LIGHTS! We all cheered with the same thought: WE SURVIVED! We leapt to our feet. The all-clear signal blared away. Never mind that the Brits would come with the night. We were alive right now, right this minute.

  I spun around and around. Where was my mother? I had heard her in the darkness. So where was she?

  There. On the stairs. The curving stairs with their niches that cradled the lovers who kissed madly, wildly, while their city disintegrated around them. And perched next to my mother was today's lover, a soldier. An unknown man like all the others, this one had dark brown hair, a long face with a cleft chin, a big toothy grin, and an arm stretched around her. A bottle of something, too. Schnapps? Whatever, she was flushed, and, yes, Mother had found much love here. When she was lonely or depressed, she abandoned our little underground bar and came here, hoping for a raid, hoping for a warm embrace. Oh, yes, this wasn't her favorite bunker for its thick, thick concrete ceiling, but for the groping love like she'd found in old Berlin.

  I pushed through the crowd, shoved the butt of some old dowager. She was there, talking, smiling to the soldier. My mother with those big eyes, eyes that were either enormous pools of happiness or sorrow. And the long dark blonde hair, the wide cheeks, the beautiful teeth, the narrow chin.

  “Mama!”

  I fell into her, drank in her syrupy
breath that smelled so thickly of schnapps. I fell between my mother and the anonymous soldier who was due to be killed at the front when his leave was finished in just a few days. I fell into her skirt. And I was crying. It seemed like years since I had seen her. I had forgotten how pretty she looked. How dark she painted her eyes. And I had forgotten her voice. Yes, I hadn't been able to remember it. But now it was back. All back… yet I was so sad.

  “I'm so scared!” I sobbed.

  “Willi? Scared? You can't be scared.” She leaned over and kissed the anonymous soldier one last time before he was forever carried away with the surge of people. “Now just stop it. I need you. There's a delivery to be made…”

  I looked up at her. Forget the coffee or booze or whatever it was little innocent me was supposed to take to whomever. Forget my scrambling about the bombed city, so tiny as to be unsuspicious and unnoticed. We weren't going to make it. I had the deepest premonition. The surest feeling. No, something terrible was going to happen. Yes, it would wipe us away, carry us to the brink of death, then beyond.

  I blurted the truth: “Mama, I'm afraid you're going to be killed!”

  “Mein Gott! What are you saying?” As if she were looking into the future, her eyes were unmoving, ghostly, and I knew right then and there that she, too, feared her life would soon end. She seemed to accept this, though, even welcome it, and for a moment she was quiet. Then she shook her head and said, “Oh, Willi, stop! You're always carrying on so dramatically. I'm here. I'm fine,” she said, pushing me away. “Whatever has gotten into you, child?” She glared at me, adding, “Me, killed? How could you even think such a thing?”

  “But Mama!”

  As if I had lost her years and years ago, I wouldn't let her go. If we parted now, we'd part forever. I cried. I didn't know I could cry so hard, and as she tried to separate us, I lunged into the folds of my mother's luscious body. I felt her glorious, silky hair string across my face.

  I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was right. Oh, yes. I was a small boy who saw it all. I had seen what my mother was involved in, I knew perfectly well the dangers that licked at her being. She shouldn't have started operating on the black market, but she had, dealing in brandy and schnapps and cigarettes and coffee from Denmark. Yes, it was a highly profitable underground network run by the darkest of people. And soon she would make a mistake, and for her betrayal she was going to be killed. Oh, Lord, I couldn't let go of her. Couldn't pull away. They would kill her. Absolutely. But why did I know this? Why, me, little Willi, who knew nothing else of the world except burned-out, bombed-out, flattened and crushed Berlin?