Deadfall in Berlin

by Robert Alexander

  “Will! Stop!” shrieked Alecia, rushing around.

  No, I had to kill him!

  “Stop or I'm going to shoot!”

  It was like she'd knocked the breath out of me. I looked up. Alecia was standing in front of me, legs spread, arms out. And she was training the gun on me. I lost all my strength and dropped Heinrich, gasping, to the floor. This wasn't possible. Alecia? No, she wouldn't harm me! She couldn't!

  “Will,” she said, her voice shaking, “I don't want to hurt you—I'm your friend! I just want you to stop.”

  Stunned, I stared at her and the pistol. Now I knew the truth. A whirlwind of hysteria began to twist within me, and I started shaking, sweating, because Alecia had been pretending all along to like me. That much was clear. She'd just been acting, faking everything to gain my confidence so that she could hear my awful story. That's all she wanted. Not me. She'd faked everything, and now that the real me was fully revealed, so was her real feeling for me: contempt. It was obvious. She despised me for what I'd done to my mother. That gun she aimed at me was proof. Everything else had been a lie.

  “Now just get back, Will. Get off Heinrich and go sit against the wall. Go on!”

  My body was shaking, waves of tremors rolling over me. I'd been horribly deceived, and I wanted to run away, to cry out, but instead I did as she ordered, and started pushing myself up.

  “That's good. That's good,” she said. “I'm your friend, Will. Do you understand? I don't want to hurt you. I'm just trying to prevent any trouble.”

  Bullshit. She was no friend, and I froze. Sweat poured from my head, dripped all over Heinrich. Staring at the gun, I realized Alecia should shoot me. She knew what had happened. She knew that I'd killed my own mother. And my shrink should be the one to punish me. I deserved to die, I wanted to die!

  “Will, please!”

  No. I wanted this to be all over. Mistake or no mistake, I wanted to pay for what I'd done. My eyes clenched shut.

  “Just shoot.”

  Nothing happened and I opened my eyes, saw Alecia lowering the gun. I'd won while wanting only to lose.

  Grabbing Heinrich again, I demanded, “Shoot or I'll strangle him!”

  “No.”

  She didn't even lift the gun. The determination and the fright had passed from her face, and she just stood there, defeated. No, stood there, catching her thoughts. Then she looked up, having searched her arsenal of reason.

  “Heinrich, where was that hotel?”

  “Wh-what?” he gasped beneath me.

  “The hotel you and Eva and Joe went to—where was it!”

  He rolled his head on the floor, twisted to see her. “I don't know.”

  “Think!” she demanded. “Was it in Schöneberg?’’

  “No.” Totally confused, he closed his eyes, then said, “On the Ku-damm. A little place right on the Kurfürstendamm.”

  I stared at Alecia. What was she talking about? Why was she asking? None of this made any sense. Alecia had to kill me or I had to kill Heinrich. That's all there was. That was the only choice left. No other way out. Weary, my fingers clasped Heinrich's collar. A slow death. A painful one. For him or for me. I didn't care which.

  “Will,” began Alecia, “if you release Heinrich and just sit on the floor over there, I'll tell you something. I want to show you the real truth about your father.”

  My fingers clenched, then began to relax. I stared at her. Heinrich? No, there wasn't anything more, was there? There couldn't be.

  “Will, do you want to learn who your father really was?”

  I knew that tone, soft and luring. The glint in her eye told me Alecia saw a greater truth. Something looming that I was blind to. And she wasn't going to just tell me. No, Alecia could never make it that easy. She was going to make me work for it, force me to discover it myself. Yes, she knew something very important, something that neither Heinrich nor I was even aware of.

  Without thinking, I loosened again my grasp on Heinrich. Slid off him. Defeated, I pushed myself away. Crawled across the linoleum, over bits of broken glass. From the office I heard someone moaning. George. He was coming to. Forget about him, I thought. I just wanted to die. As quickly as possible I wanted to be punished and banished from this life. But not without learning about my father.

  “Good, Will. Very good.” She waved the gun at Heinrich. “Now you, you sit over there, against the other wall. You can be sure I'll shoot if you so much as move.”

  The gray-haired man slowly pushed himself up, propping himself on one arm. He caught his breath, wiped the blood from his mouth and forehead. Sheepishly, he did as he was told, leaning his tired body against the wall opposite me. He was so different now. Not at all the fierce image I'd kept alive all these years. So this, I realized, is how we all shrink.

  “Now, Will, I want you to do something.”

  Oh, Christ. I knew that voice, too. That was the beginning of her chant. No, I thought. No trance. Not now.

  “I want you to go back,” she said, staring at me.

  “But—!”

  “Will, you heard something else. That last night when you overheard Joe and Dieter and Loremarie arguing, they said something about this, didn't they?”

  “I… I don't know.”

  “Of course you do.”

  I rubbed my eyes, and the answer that I didn't know was there popped forward, and I replied, “Yes, I guess so.”

  “Of course you did. Now if you want to know the truth about your father, then you have to go back and tell me what you heard.”

  Heinrich groaned, said, “Oh, Scheisse, how ridiculous.”

  “Shut up!” snapped Alecia, waving the gun nervously at him. “Or I'll permanently regress you!”

  My left arm crossed over my chest, and I bowed my head and suppressed a smile. She'd do it. I was proud of her because she'd really do it.

  “Okay. Will, take a deep breath,” she began, cueing me with her own breathing.

  Like a circus dog, I almost couldn't help myself. I sucked in all the air my lungs could hold, then let it trickle back out.

  “That's good. Will. That's very good. Now roll your eyes up and slowly, very slowly—”

  “But don't you do a trance, too!” I said. “He'll jump you if you close your eyes.”

  “I won't. I'm watching him. Now just breathe easily, fully, and roll your eyes up. Good. Very good. Now slowly close your eyelids. Good.”

  In spite of or perhaps because of the intensity of the present situation, I felt hypnosis rush into my body and mind. This had to be quick and sharp. No messing around. There and back. I felt myself lunging for that bit of a trance that was beginning to appear, grabbing at it and throwing it over myself like a big blanket. I had to duck into Berlin, learn something, and fly back here with that knowledge.

  “Now, Will, you're going to go back to that night in Berlin when you heard Joe and Dieter and Loremarie arguing. You can return as an adult, able to see this all like a film. You will see your young self, Willi, sitting on those rocks, spying on them and listening.”

  Yes. Everything around me was gathering speed. I had to hurl it forward, rush to get there.

  “And you can…”

  A great gust seemed to sweep over my body, lift me up and out of windy Chicago. Go back, back to Berlin. Yes, there was something more. They were shouting, saying all this stuff. I wasn't really listening, but I heard it. Those voices. They were so far away. But not really. I could go back quite easily, right to that ring in the tree of my life.

  “… you can recall everything that was said.”

  “I'm on my way.”

  “Good.”

  As if I were flying from O’Hare, the lights of the Loop swirled beneath me. The John Hancock tower, the Standard Oil building. And that stupid, vast grid of orange street lights. Lake Michigan. Big and black. Behind me I heard voices, and I turned and gazed down. Now Berlin was down there. I was up in that moon-filled sky and what was left of the city was crumbled like bread crumbs
beneath me. Oh, my God.

  “It's nothing but a shell. Everything… everything's ruined. The whole city.”

  “I know. Just tell me what you hear. Tell me what else they said.”

  Voices rose from one area, and everything started swirling, sucking me down. In a giant whoosh, I fell out of the sky and into the remains of a Schöneberg neighborhood. Willi. He sat outside a windowless window, crouching in fear.

  “I was so afraid.”

  “Of course you were.”

  “And so skinny.”

  “Now look at Willi sitting there, being worried and afraid. While he was trying to think how to help his mother, the three people inside got in an argument. Tell me what they were saying just before Willi ran away.”

  “Loremarie called Dieter a doormat.”

  “She did, didn't she? And what else?”

  “Dieter was mad at himself.”

  “Why?”

  Just as Alecia said, I left Willi sitting on the rocks, and turned my attention to the room. As if I were merely turning up the volume, their voices came clear and sharp and I focused on them.

  “For the same reason Mother wouldn't forgive Joe.”

  “Go on.”

  I heard the three of them arguing and yelling, throwing curses back and forth. Suddenly Loremarie slapped Joe. Oh, shit. She poked him with hot, seething accusations. Oh, Christ. And what was Dieter now saying? What? What did he say? My God. I had to—“Alecia!”

  “I'm right here.”

  Alecia! I had to get to Chicago, had to tell her what Loremarie said and Dieter, too! With every bit of energy, I twisted and shouted. I had to break this trance, snap myself right out of Berlin!

  “Alecia!”

  I punched through. Huffing and sweating, I ripped open my eyes and found myself sitting back on the floor. Heinrich across from me, Alecia standing just beyond him. 1 looked from one to the other. I understood it all. What had been said in those ruins was the last of the pieces to complete the huge puzzle.

  Staring at Heinrich, I said, “Dieter cursed himself because… because he should have stopped them but didn't!” Little dribbles of things I'd caught here and there suddenly all fit together. “He should have stopped them the first time. He was talking about Mother and Joe. They… they went to the Kneipe at Dieter's Pension back in 1934 or whenever, and it was there in the bar that Joe confessed his love for her. ” Yes. That room with the curving balcony was where all the illicit love took place, Dieter's as well as Mother's and Joe's. “She loved Joe, too, and they got a room. Dieter gave them a room at his Pension. He knew they were cousins, but Berlin was Berlin, and he gave them his most special room, the one on the top floor with the balcony. Later… when Mother's grandfather threw her out, Dieter took her in. He needed her, sure. She was a convenient alibi. But he also felt a little bit responsible.” I added, “Mother only hated Joe because he abandoned her—he left Berlin without her. Yet I think she really loved him.”

  “I do, too.” Alecia looked right at me. “But her grandfather didn't find them at Dieter's, did he?”

  “No. No, he didn't.”

  I heard Joe and Mother echoing in my memory. He: Once should have been enough. She: But it wasn't, was it?

  “He didn't find them there because…” I stared right at Heinrich. “Because that was the first time Mother and Joe made love. Grandfather didn't find them until the second time… at that little hotel on the Ku-damm!”

  Heinrich's face flushed red. Shaking his head, he cursed and muttered.

  “No, that's not true!” He grew deep red. “Besides, even if it were, it still wouldn't prove anything. You could still be my son!”

  I studied him, this ugly man, left over from a terrible time. He'd quickly done away with Joe and Anton, but had taken years to ruin Mother.

  “No,” I calmly said, knowing deep within that I could never be the offspring of such a person. “My father was Joe.”

  I glanced at Alecia and could almost visibly see something strike her. With a rush of excitement, her eyes opened as a chorus of insight blossomed in her mind, illuminating both past and present.

  “Of course!” She turned to Heinrich, pierced him with her eyes. “You're the one who told Eva's grandfather where they were.”

  “No!” He waved his head from side to side, lifted his hands, palms out. “Nein, nein.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  The great seer, Alecia was calm and direct, flying on pure intuition to the only sensible point. Sure of herself, she smiled victoriously. Finally she had the prize, the very thing all shrinks want: complete understanding of all the relationships, which in turn made everyone's actions all quite logical, even sensible.

  “You wanted Eva all to yourself. That was the competition between you and Joe, and you were afraid that Joe was winning, that somehow Eva and he would run away together. And… and so you called her grandfather—no one else would have—knowing full well that he'd chase Joe out of town!”

  Oddly Heinrich lowered his hands and then sat quiet, gazing at the floor. So it was true. Heinrich had phoned Mother's grandfather and told him where in all of wild Berlin to find his two incestuous grandchildren. That had been the start of Mother's long slow fall in which she lost family, lover, cabaret dreams. And me.

  It happened so quickly. I didn't think Heinrich had it in him. Nearly as fast as a lashing whip, he hurled himself over and grabbed Alecia by the ankle. Using all his force, he jerked her right off her feet and she screamed and came tumbling down, smacking hard on the linoleum. He scrambled right over her, pawing and clawing, lunging for the gun. I threw myself forward, but I wasn't fast enough. Glass. Lots of it beneath my feet. I slipped. Oh, Christ! He was going to kill her!

  “Alecia!”

  I jumped over her, grabbed at the gun she was still struggling to hold, at the weapon Heinrich was trying to rip away. And somehow we all three came up on our knees. Bobbed to the surface, the gun a wild bomb between us that we were all struggling for but could not control. Caught in our tangled mass of hands, the pistol tilted barrel-up right toward Alecia's head. I thought of trances and hypnosis and a power of concentration stranger than I could ever conjure on my own, and I pictured my body a single, hard muscle. In an instant the gun snapped into my control and the thing was pointed right at my throat.

  His face now crimson with fury, his brow bulging with wrinkles and veins, Heinrich shouted, “I… I want to haunt you for… forever!”

  He jerked his head back, then hurled himself forward. His forehead dug into my temple and… and my head exploded with pain. As my grasp weakened, Heinrich wrenched the gun toward himself, heaved himself up. And wrapped his lips around the barrel. With a simple twitch of our collective fist, it was over in an instant.

  Epilogue

  I thought it would be an impossible knot to untie, but now, six months later, I'm beginning to sense this thing loosen. Alecia tells me I'm making great progress. I don't know. Every time I see an article about a hunting accident, I clip it out. Awful things continue to happen, and it's comforting to know that I'm not alone in that hellish boat.

  The police wanted to know every detail. That was the hardest part. The same questions, over and over again. I couldn't have made it those first few weeks without Alecia. She ran defense, telling them that Heinrich had come after me because I had witnessed him killing a Jewish man during the fall of Berlin. They bought it, of course, as did the Tribune. Nazis still get ink. There was no mention of Mother.

  Alecia made me a new tape right away. I saw her nearly every day for that first month and when I wasn't seeing her I was listening to her voice and floating off into never-never land. It was sort of like being pickled, but it worked. I'm still alive.

  The big news is that I've taken a break from work—Dear Agent has politely called it a sabbatical—and last month I went to Berlin. Went there physically, I mean. Via Lufthansa. Alecia wasn't sure I could handle it, but I packed the tape and off I went. I had to. I needed new Berlin m
emories. I flew into Frankfurt, then took the train across East Germany, passed through die Mauer—The Wall—and arrived right at Zoo Station. As we pulled in, I noticed that the Zoo Bunker was gone. Don't ask me how they destroyed something so staunchly fortified, but they did, blasting that monolithic pile of concrete into a dusty memory.

  I stayed at a little Pension on the Ku-Damm itself, right near Uhlandstrasse, a cozy inn on the top two floors of a five-story building. A bordello occupied the floor beneath, and I couldn't help but wonder if possibly, just maybe, this was where my great-grandfather had burst in on his two grandchildren. I had every intention of asking the management if this had indeed been a Pension before the war, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to inquire.

  The very first thing I did there was go out walking, and my feet had a memory of their own and took me right into the heart of the Tiergarten district and to one particular house. Tante Lore's, where a large headstone with a Jewish star on it now dominated the front yard. The former aristocratic townhouse had been rebuilt and divided into apartments, and I climbed to the top floor, took a deep breath, and knocked. Somehow I was sure she'd still be alive, heavy with years, that Aryan blonde hair all gray. But she wasn't. Instead a fair-haired woman about my age answered the door, and when I asked after my Tante Lore, this woman hesitated, then informed me that her aunt—her brother's sister—had died not long after the war. By the name of Marianne, Loremarie's niece was quite pleasant and very attractive—high cheekbones, long, slender body—and she invited me in for tea. She'd heard of Eva, Joe, Dieter and me, but assumed we'd all died during the fall of Berlin or the first horrible years of defeat. Dieter had, anyway. She knew that for a fact, because Loremarie had told how he'd saved her from a Russian and in turn been executed.

  I stayed only for a while—I really didn't recognize the house, it had changed so during restoration—and next I went to the cemetery where we'd buried Erich. When I couldn't remember where we'd placed him in that vast space, I did a short trance, took myself into hypnosis until I saw a tree and a wall. Then I opened my eyes. The wall with the hole was repaired, of course, and that tree long gone, but I found the approximate site and spread out a bed of flowers. Mein kleiner Erich.