My hands shot to the skies, and within a few short steps we emerged from the hovel, Joe just ahead of me with his hands clasped behind his head. So they would torture this downed pilot spying about Berlin. What about me? Would they ask me a few questions, then dispose of me with a bullet in the back of my head for helping Joe, the enemy? And what about Erich and Mother? Would they go after them? Would all of us perish simply because blood was thicker than water?
In the distance I heard sirens. Slow rising wails predicting the horror that would soon fall from the heavens. These two thugs were shoving us out, guns at our backs, and Berlin was about to get it again. And I thought, why hadn't Mother taken us far away? Why hadn't she fled to some mountain village?
I tripped, stumbled to my knees. The grunty, muscular one charged up, grabbed me by the neck, kicked me and yanked me to my feet. I cried out, wishing this guy would end up chopped meat in a sausage factory.
“Willi!” shouted Joe, turning around.
The other thug pistol-whipped Joe in the side of the head, and even I heard the crack of metal against skull. As he sank, Joe looked at me, desperate and afraid. For me, I think. He was afraid for me, and I saw Joe struggle against unconsciousness that loomed all around him. And as I watched my… my father tumble down and down, I saw his fingers encircle a brick. An Angel of Death, I thought. Just as quickly, Joe bolted up, fired the brick through the air right over me. With perfect aim it struck the bald, muscular one in the side of the head. Catching him off guard, the brick dug into the man's temple. Blood spurting from his wound, he grabbed at his head and collapsed.
I jumped aside and Joe lunged at the moustached one, hurled a fist at him.
“Run, Willi!” shouted Joe.
I couldn't move, not even as the Gestapo man fired point-blank at Joe. The gun exploded, and a bullet whizzed past Joe, past me. Next, the earth hiccuped, rolled. I stumbled. Everything was falling. What… what was this?
Another ear-splitting blast. But not from a gun. No, from above. It was a bomb. Bombs. Lots of them shitting down on us! A glorious God-given air raid! I briefly glanced up and saw hundreds of little silver triangles. It was a raid in broad daylight, with Tom and Bill, Mike, Steve, Dick, Paul and Bob all tucking us Germans in with their explosives. As if I were standing out in a spring rain shower, I looked up and grinned.
“Run!” screamed Joe again.
Somehow he'd gathered Superman strength, and was battling the brown-haired one, raw fist after fist. Then Joe landed one square and hard on the agent's cheek. And the guy stumbled back and crumbled to the ground.
Above I heard a bomb whistling and then nothing. Silence. Dreaded silence, and I thought, You're all right as long as you can hear them.
“Get down, Joe!” I cried, dropping and covering my head and opening my mouth.
Some twenty meters away a huge metal thing plunged out of the sky and screeched, burrowed into the earth. But nothing more happened. Trembling, I glanced at it, a big cigar poking in the ruins. A dud? No, a delayed action explosive.
I was up, ready to bolt. “It's a time bomb!” I cried, grabbing Joe by the arm. “Come on!”
At once we were flying over the destruction of Berlin, escaping as fast as we could. Behind us the moustached one had wakened and was now aiming, firing. Bullets whistled like missiles, twanged off concrete, fortunately missing both of us. I stole a look back. The bald man was on his feet, brushing aside blood. And then clambering to his feet, weaving, next racing after us with the other man.
Joe and I ducked behind a wall. A bullet banged like a mad pinball around us. I spotted a hole, and Joe and I squirmed through and emerged in someone's house. Roof above long gone. Family long killed. Ahead I saw blasted couch, pieces of chair: living room. Charging on, we came to remnants of a table: dining room. Pieces of tile: bathroom. Twisted iron frame: bedroom. And then a huge opening: the disintegrated rear of the building.
Zzzzz-t! Bzzzz-t! Firing at us, the two Gestapo men were now not far behind. Joe clasped my hand, charged on, clawing over stone, over pots and pans, over a stove. He ducked, led the way into a courtyard that looked like an imitation of the moon. I spun around. Ahead of us a wall towered blankly to the sky. To the right a pile of carnage too high to climb. To the left, huge hunks of this blasted neighborhood sealed an alley.
“Over there!” ordered Joe.
We hurled ourselves over debris, hunkered down and hid behind a block of stone. I gasped, held the air, tried to quiet my surging lungs. And smiled. Looking at Joe, I grinned, and he lifted a finger to his lips. This was a deadly game. Yes, but...
I heard them. The two of them were running through that living room, that bedroom. Past soup pot, past dresser. They emerged in our tomb. This was it, they knew. The final kill. We were in here somewhere. Whether or not they had orders to bring Joe and me in for questioning no longer mattered. We had resisted; they would delight in our kill.
I don't know why, but I wasn't too worried. Joe held my hand. And I looked up and saw another wave of silvery triangles, smudges of black flak bursting around them. Drop a handful of bombs right here, I thought. Nail these two thugs!
A scream answered my prayers. Another whistling scream from the heavens that started high high high and was plunging toward us with each second, pitch tighter and tighter. No, many whistles. An entire chorus. Then nothing. Silence. That was a full cradle of American bombs, I understood. Eight big ones that started landing—curling, cascading toward us like a tidal wave. Yes, I prayed. Let there be divine justice.
Joe wrapped himself over me and pressed us beneath a beam and to the earth. With my fatherly shield over me, I opened my mouth and screamed as the world exploded. PressureSuction. The all-too-close blast scoured my ears, the shock waves rattled my insides. My heart quivered. It was all so loud I didn't know if I made any noise. I only felt the earth heave, then heard rock and pebble raining down. Finally I did in fact hear myself screaming as wood and stone and shard and pebble continued to pelt down on us. But mostly on Joe.
One of those pots came clattering down, and an instant later it was disturbingly quiet. The wave of bombers had flown on, dumped the rest of their load in the next district.
Through the cloud of gray dust I heard a cry. A baby cry. Brushing aside debris, Joe lifted himself off me. 1 struggled to raise my head and climb to my feet. Looking over the beam, I saw that our tomb had been cracked wide in one corner and was now entirely different. And empty. The big, bald Gestapo guy had vanished, having apparently been rearranged into something altogether different that was most certainly no longer human and definitely no longer alive.
I gazed around, my eyes following my ears following the whimper. There, off to the side. The other agent, the one with the brown hair and moustache. What remained of him had been hurled to the side and wedged against a wall. He blubbered and looked at me, his blackened face begging for mercy. His right arm was gone, as was most of his left and fresh red blood was pumping out of the severed limbs and flowing over dangling white cords of ligament.
I clambered past Joe and into the opening, where I searched the new rubble that had been blasted from the old rubble. I knew what this Gestapo guy wanted: a bullet in the head. Instant death instead of this grotesque leak of life. But neither his black pistol nor, for that matter, his right arm that had held the gun, was anywhere to be seen. I realized I could bash him with another brick, but…
We looked one another right in our grimy faces, right in our eyes, his all full of tears. I felt glad, and with that realized he and the muscular one who had been blown to bits had succeeded in killing a part of me.
“Willi,” called Joe from behind.
I stared at that sobbing, bloody stump of a man, then turned, and left him crying like a mouse caught but not killed in a trap, like a mouse that cries under the sink for hour after hour until insanity and a dry heart pushes it over the edge.
I walked up to Joe, and he took my hand in his. While distant bombs continued to smash Berl
in, we moved on, leaving the crying brute to trickle to death. Yet while I felt safe with Joe and glad to be alive, I was very disturbed because I couldn't help but wonder who wanted both of us, Joe and me, captured and executed. Simply, I needed to know who had told the Gestapo that one downed American pilot lurking about Berlin had taken shelter at our bunker bar. More importantly, well, of all the stupid holes in Berlin, how had those thugs known precisely where to wait for us? Why were they so cigarette-sure that I would take Joe to the one with that metal flap for a door? And I wondered who had done the blabbing, for as far as I could figure it, aside from Erich and me, there were only two people in Berlin who knew of our secret hovel: Dieter and my very own mother.
Chapter 12
So who in this world of enemies had betrayed Joe and me to the Gestapo? Not who of the millions, but literally which of the two? I shuddered. Did I dare to find out? Did I really want to know the answer? What if it was Dieter, the man who'd been the closest to an uncle I'd ever had? He could want Joe dead, couldn't he? After all, Dieter's elderly parents had roasted under the Allied bombing of Hamburg, and the Allies had blown his leg to bits as well. But what about me? Was Dieter willing to sacrifice me just to get Joe?
So what would I, could I, do if it had been Dieter who'd finked on us? I was afraid. I'd recently waded through blood, and back there I'd witnessed something black and cold and bottomless. From all this I'd drawn sort of a horrific power, one, I knew, that I would never be rid of. I'd been forever infected. To solve problems around here you had to kill people. Was this how I would have to deal with Dieter?
Or Mother? What if she'd turned Joe in, wanting any memory of him erased? What if that memory included me? Could that possibly be? I trembled. If it were so, what would I be forced to do?
As we came down a street that had just swallowed a few bombs, Joe asked, “How far?”
“Not very.”
“Are you all right?”
“Ja…” I lied, entirely preoccupied with worry and what needed to be accomplished. “How's your head?”
“Attached.”
We passed around a corner and onto Hohenstaufenstrasse. This was the northern part of the Schöneberg district and the remains of our little inn were between this street and Grunewaldstrasse, not far from a little park with a museum. It used to be such a nice neighborhood. Five-story buildings, square balconies with old ladies and pots of geraniums, millions of kids. But now…
My nose twitched as something rancid curled into my nostrils. Just then Joe stopped in front of a recently collapsed, smoldering building. Tacked to the remains of the entry was a battered sign that read: “Help, we're buried alive. Please dig us out!”
Joe said, “There're people down there, we have to get them out.”
I sniffed the air again, smelled fat, all black and drippy, imagined it splattering on hot embers. And I knew those people down there had partially predicted their fate by placing that sign. They were indeed buried. But from the tangled mess of charred wood, from the rank smoke, I could tell a lot was cooking down there. Probably had been roasting since yesterday's firebombing.
“Nee, it's too late.”
Wordless, Joe shuffled after me as we clambered over a sign that read Parfums and Blumen, turned down another of the endless streets lined with despair. Heard screams in the distance. Laughing. We passed a little girl smaller than me. She was crying and carrying a rucksack on her back, hurrying on. Was it her mother, father, or brother who'd just been killed? Were all of them now gone?
Minutes later the skeleton of our Pension loomed before us. I'd been thinking of murder, of what I would do to our own would-be murderer, and I realized Joe shouldn't go back down to the bunker bar. Not now. Not yet. It wasn't safe. If Dieter had turned him in, he could just as easily call the Gestapo again. If Mother was responsible, well…
“You'd better not come with me,” I said, and then offered the last of my reasons. “You know, in case that other agent, the one in the leather coat, is still around.”
The pinkish-skinned one, I meant. And that was a very real chance, for he could be down in the bar drinking a beer, caressing Mama with his eyes.
Joe said, “You're probably right. But what about you?”
Using my favorite English word, I said, “Okay, I'll be okay.”
“You were great back there, kid. With those Gestapo guys.”
He hugged me, but what could I say? Thanks, Papa. Gee, Papa, I got it all from you. Gosh, I just know how to get around. Or: I survive.
Instead, I looked at the ground, at Joe's feet. Why did I feel so ashamed? Why were the truth and I so secretively linked? I shook my head. I was right, wasn't I? Joe was more to me than a cousin, wasn't he? There had been an evening when booze and turmoil and Mother and Joe had all rushed together and conceived me, hadn't there?
I muttered, “I'll be back in a couple of minutes.”
Joe slunk into the entry of a demolished building, and I hurried down the street, trying not to think of my beginnings, but instead a plan. As I neared the Pension I heard voices and slowed. Laughter. Was there an entire troop of soldiers here now? Did I even dare to return to my own home?
I slithered along the outside wall of our hotel and peered into the remains of the original Kneipe. Through a shattered window I saw her, wearing her light brown wool coat and that hat of hers, an oblong thing of wool rimmed with chestnut brown fur. I stared at her, my mother, and saw her fawning on the arm of some swarthy man with dark hair and dark eyes and sporting a fedora and long topcoat. Perfectly still, I watched as Mother lost her balance, clung to this man, giggled and whispered something to him that he instantly liked. Yes, there'd been a raid and obviously more booze and song. None too steady, Mother led him through the ruins of the Kneipe and up toward the front of the building. I'd never seen this man. Who was he, why was Mother pouring herself over him so? Was he also Gestapo, a partner perhaps of that slender man with the pink face?
The man stopped, unbuttoned his coat and reached in. He glanced from side to side, up and down, and no one but me saw the wad of money he pulled out and started peeling. Ein, zwei… It was, I thought, strange money. All the same size, all the same color. Where does such small green money come from? I nearly gasped. America. Those weren't Reichsmarks, but American dollars. And Mother was quickly accepting them, opening her coat and using them to plump her breasts.
That done, the swarthy one buttoned his coat, then seized my mother and pressed his mouth to hers in a long, lustful encounter that was whorish and disgusting. It went on so long that I cast my eyes down. And when they parted, a long windy sigh gushed from my mother's lips. Finally, the man darted off.
“Auf Wiedersehen!” laughed my mother.
The man trotted onto the street, glanced directly at me, hesitated for just a moment, then turned in the other direction and hurried on. Disgusted, I rushed into our building. Mother, clutching her wool coat around her, was leaning against a wall, her painted eyes fully shut. I studied her thick red lips, those brightly varnished nails, and I thought, this is too much. There is a war. There are people dying, roasting all around.
The anger growled from my throat in a nervous cough. Mother's eyes fluttered awake, gazed down at me, blinked slowly.
“Willichen. ”
She raised her arm, hand dangling. I, of course, went to her, ready to attack but forcing myself to halt just out of arm's reach. A cloud of her sweet, flowery perfume enveloped me.
“Who was that man?” I demanded.
She lazily grinned at me, her son. “Just a friend of ours.”
I breathed in her perfume and from her lips I detected a thick scent of over-ripe, intoxicated apples. Apfelschnapps. I would forever be disgusted by it and brandy because they would always remind me of my mother's daily stupor.
“You're drunk.”
She laughed. “I keep telling you, Willi,” she said, swaying slightly, “that I'm trying to enjoy the war because the peace is going to be horrible.”
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“What did that man want?”
She giggled, dropping down on me as if I were a luscious piece of fruit. “There are certain things that little boys shouldn't know.”
Like where mothers get booze when there's none to be had. Somehow it just managed to appear. Once a week or so, like magic, a truck would pull up and glum Danish or French laborers would leave us with a case of this or that. Even a few bottles of the priceless Hennessy cognac. I knew where to get cigarettes and chocolate and coffee—Mother often sent me down to the railyards to trade bottles of brandy for them—but her source of beer and schnapps and even vermouth was her most precious and most guarded secret. It was, she often laughed, her only trade secret.
She wrapped her arms around me, squeezed me into her waist, nestling me against her and nearly extinguishing my anger. Mother, I thought, just hold me, tell me everything will be all right. Keep me small so that you may always watch over me.
Rubbing my neck, kissing me on the top of my head, she said, “There was a raid, but you're fine. Mein kleiner Soldat, I don't ever have to worry about you, do I?”
Yes, she did. She did! Crushed in my mother's embrace, I wanted to start beating on her, begging her to worry, just even a little. Just sometimes.
“Is she ever sexually inappropriate with you, Willi?”
Disgusted, I shoved myself back. Mother was like this with everyone, she was a master at using her affections to manipulate the world. By stroking your back, cooing in your ear, growing angry, then giggly, she could change borders more effectively than any soldier. And nearly always get what she wanted. Her secret weapon. Though she never took it beyond this stage with me, I'd seen her push much further and ensnare countless men.
I brought my anger to a boil again, forced myself to keep hot-tempered.
“Mama, those two guys from the Gestapo—the one's who've been at the bar before—they knew just where to wait for Joe and me. We went to our secret place, and they were already there, just waiting for us!”
Deadfall in Berlin Page 10
