Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  Where the hell did they think they were going? Russell wondered. Poland?

  He didn’t wait to find out, hustling down two sets of stairs to the tunnel below. Here he received an unpleasant surprise – there was gunfire in the tunnel leading south. It still sounded some way away, but over the last few days Russell had learned how being underground could warp one’s sense of distance.

  He scurried down the tunnel to the abandoned station and headed for the spiral staircase. He had climbed about five steps when the blast of air and sound hit him, blowing him backwards against the handrail and spilling him onto the platform. The debris cascading down the stairwell sounded like a coalman emptying his sack.

  Russell scrambled unsteadily to his feet. He felt like he’d been hit by a wall, but no bones seemed broken.

  He started up the iron staircase, holding his collar against the swirling dust. He was used to darkness above, but the old booking office was now awash with beams of light, flooding down and around a mountain of metal. The flak gun and its mount had fallen through the roof, crushed the interior walls of the old station building, and come to rest on solid earth, half in the old booking office, half in the room where Russell and Varennikov had spent most of their time. The long barrel of the 88mm gun lay across the remains of the inner wall, as if it was resting from its long labours.

  Varennikov was somewhere underneath it. Russell squeezed himself between a wall and several huge wheels, then through a gap between buffers. There was more space left in the other room, and he allowed himself a moment of hope that the young Russian had survived. But no – there were his legs, both severed by an edge of armoured plate. The rest of his body was underneath the fallen carriage, crushed to a pulp.

  It would have been quick. Varennikov might have heard the viaduct give way, but he would barely have had time to look up before nemesis fell through the ceiling.

  Russell worked his way back into the old booking office. There were two more corpses behind the gun, both of boys in Hitlerjugend uniforms. There were probably more outside. The viaduct above looked as if someone had taken a huge bite out of it, but there were no signs of charring or smoke. The structure had probably been compromised already, the gun just a little too heavy.

  So what now? Russell asked himself. With the viaduct half-destroyed he might find it hard to reach Leissner, and what, in any case, would be the point? – there was nothing he could do for the man, other than keep him company. There were people with more claim to his attention, people he loved.

  Not that he knew where they were. He decided he would try to reach Effi’s flat. If she stayed in one of the big shelters she should be all right, but if she ended up at home his protection – and Nikoladze’s letter – might be worth something.

  The Reichsbahn uniform was somewhere under the wreckage, but the foreign worker outfit he was wearing should be almost as safe. Surely the Nazis had better things to do with their final hours than check credentials.

  He hesitated for a moment at the top of the staircase, wondering what he could say to mark Varennikov’s passing, but nothing came to mind. He remembered what the young Russian’s father had said, that his son’s life would unfold like the chronicle of a better world. So much for a father’s dreams.

  He gingerly worked his way down the wreckage-strewn staircase. At the bottom he hesitated, uncertain which way to go. North would take him away from the West End and Effi’s apartment, but south was where he heard the gunfire. He opted for the latter. One thing about Russian soldiers – you could usually hear them coming.

  He passed the bottom of the other spiral staircase and entered uncharted territory. It was hard to be certain underground, but the tracks seemed to be rising, which suggested they would soon emerge into the open. He knew there was an east-west running U-Bahn line somewhere in the near vicinity, but had no idea if there was any way of accessing it from the tunnel he was in. Iron ladders rose up to the roof at regular intervals, but the U-Bahn line would surely pass beneath him.

  He was making his way around a long curve in the tracks when the walls ahead briefly shone with a faint yellow light. A split-second later he heard the scream, also faint, but no less bloodcurdling in its intensity. A flamethrower, he guessed. A few moments of agony before you died.

  He could hear voices now, and the echoes of running feet. German voices, not that it mattered. No one coming down that tunnel would hesitate to shoot him.

  He turned on his heels and hurried back towards the first iron ladder. It seemed much further than he remembered, and the voices behind him were growing louder. Had he missed one in the dark?

  If so, he almost missed another, catching the gleam of metal as he hurried past. He grabbed hold of the ladder and started up, just as a burst of machine-gun fire erupted in the tunnel behind him. He was climbing into utter darkness, but assumed that the ladder had to lead somewhere. And then his head made painful contact with something hard – an iron railing. He hung there for several seconds, gripping the ladder until the dizziness abated, then risked using the flashlight to examine his surroundings. He was at the top of a cylindrical shaft, where the ladder ended in a small platform, just beneath a circular plate.

  The running feet sounded almost beneath him. He hauled himself onto the platform and pushed in desperation at the heavy-looking plate. Much to his surprise, it almost shot upwards, losing him his balance and tipping him back into the tunnel. He clambered swiftly out onto into the open air, rolled the cover plate back into place and looked around for something to weigh it down. He seemed to be in another goods yard, and the only movable objects with any weight were a couple of porters’ trolleys lying on the ground nearby. He dragged them over and piled them on top of the plate, realising as he did so that they weren’t heavy enough. But there was nothing else.

  Time to go, he told himself. But which way? It was late in the afternoon, so the smoke-wreathed sun was in the south-west. There was a narrow roadway heading westward, and it soon passed under several elevated tracks, which had to be those heading south out of Potsdam Station. Rounding a corner, he received confirmation in the familiar silhouette of the Lutherkirche. He knew where he was.

  He hurried up past the church, conscious once again of the city’s ominous soundtrack. A short distance down Bülow Strasse some women were dissecting a fallen horse, its innards a vivid splash of red in the sea of greys and browns. For the moment no shells were exploding nearby, but that of course could change in an instant, and the women were working at a feverish pace. Walking past on the other side, Russell noticed several of their faces were streaked with white plaster, giving them the appearance of theatrical ghosts. Intent on securing their family’s next few meals, they didn’t seem to notice him, and when a shell landed a hundred metres down the street, none ran for the nearest shelter. When Russell glanced back from the Bülow Strasse station entrance they were all still carving at the bloody carcass.

  This U-Bahn line ran underground all the way to Bismarck Strasse, and as far as Russell knew the Russians were still some kilometres away. There was no one to stop him descending to the platforms, and the tunnels, as he soon found out, were already in service as civilian highways. The current was obviously off.

  He joined the steady stream of people heading west. Ventilation shafts provided occasional patches of light, but rendered the darkness between them even more intense, and progress was extremely slow. Despite the absence of any direct threat an almost hysterical atmosphere seemed to pervade the tunnels. There was always a child crying somewhere, and every now and then a sudden shriek would echo down the tunnel. It wasn’t much more than three kilometres to Effi’s building on Bismarck Strasse, but it took him the best part of two miserable hours to reach Zoo Station. The sight of several SS officers in conclave at the far end of the westbound platform offered all the incentive he needed to head back above ground.

  Reaching the surface, he almost regretted the decision – night had fallen, most of Berlin was ablaze, and the Russia
ns seemed much closer than he’d expected. A surprising number of people were hurrying across the wide expanse beside the Stadtbahn station, and he joined the rush, heading north up Hardenberg Strasse under the blood-coloured sky. Just beyond the railway bridge several figures were swaying on gibbets, reminding him to look out for SS patrols. The bastards might ignore him in his foreign worker uniform, but they could just as easily be looking for scapegoats.

  And the uniform, he suddenly realised, was unlikely to win him a welcome at Effi’s apartment building. In the last resort he could tear off the badge, but something smarter would be an improvement. From a corpse, he thought. There were enough of them lying around.

  Some sort of fracas was underway at the Knie intersection, so he turned up the smaller Schiller Street, meaning to join Bismarck Strasse a little further down. There was a female corpse outside a bomb-damaged shop, and another close to the junction with Grolman Strasse, but no sign of the dead male he needed. A car with all its windows broken was parked in front of the ruined Schiller Theatre, and Russell had almost gone past it when he noticed the man slumped back in the driving seat, a gun still stuck in his mouth. After quickly scanning the street for witnesses, he pulled the body onto the pavement and into a niche in the rubble. The man looked about the right height, and he’d been kind enough not to get blood on his suit. Russell changed into the jacket and trousers, and congratulated himself on his luck – they fitted almost perfectly. The papers in the jacket pocket included a Nazi Party card with a suspiciously low number, and the bookmark in the man’s diary was inserted beside a map of the Reich in 1942. No wonder he’d shot himself.

  Russell hesitated a moment, then tossed the papers and diary away. If they weren’t out of date, they soon would be.

  As he reached Bismarck Strasse a welcoming shell landed half the way down to Adolf Hitler Platz. Effi’s latest home was only a few buildings down, one of those an old and elegant Berlin mansions that they’d sometimes thought of buying, should they ever want to raise a family. The blackout regulations were presumably in abeyance, but none of the windows were lit – the residents would all be in the shelter. The front door opened to his push, and he walked upstairs in search of Number 4. That door was locked, and one half-hearted bang with a shoulder showed no sign of forcing it open.

  A shell exploded nearby, causing the floor to slightly shift – perhaps the shelter was good idea.

  He polished his story on the way down, and sought out the communal basement. Conversations faltered as he stepped inside, but only briefly. He scanned the hundred-odd faces; he was not expecting to see Effi’s, but he wanted to give the impression that he did. Those still staring at him seemed relieved, probably at his lack of a uniform.

  When he asked for 185’s block-warden, a stout-looking woman in her forties was pointed out to him. ‘That’s Frau Esser.’

  Russell introduced himself as Rainer von Puttkamer, Frau von Frei- wald’s older brother.

  Frau Esser looked upset. ‘I’m afraid she left over two weeks ago. And she didn’t tell anyone where she was going.’

  ‘Oh,’ Russell said, ‘that’s a pity. She was expecting me. At least, she knew that if the Russians reached Beeskow – that’s where our family home has always been – then I would be coming to her. Perhaps she left me a message in the apartment. But of course I don’t have a key. Does the portierfrau have one, do you know?’

  ‘I expect so. She’s over there. Come with me.’

  Russell obediently followed. He’d been ready with dramatic tales of a miraculous escape to explain his lack of papers, but it seemed that they wouldn’t be needed – the imminent end of the war had finally made it all seem irrelevant. The portierfrau proved more than willing to let him use her key, and remarked on how much he looked like his sister. Perhaps it was true that couples grew to resemble other, Russell thought. He felt rather pleased by the notion, until he remembered that Effi was disguising herself as an older woman.

  He was tempted to go up immediately, but an explosion nearby persuaded him otherwise. The camp beds that belonged to Frau von Freiwald and her niece were still waiting for them, a fact which Russell found surprising, but which Frau Esser took obvious pride in – the idea of personal property still meant something in her shelter. He introduced himself to his new neighbours, and received fulsome expressions of sympathy for the loss of the family estates. Declining the offer of a game of skat, he lay down and closed his eyes.

  When he woke a few hours later, the only people still awake were an old couple reading a book by the glow of a Hindenburg light. The outside world seemed quiet, and after testing the silence for several moments he wended his way through the gently snoring bodies to the stairs. The sky above the courtyard was a fiery red, but the absence of shellfire persisted.

  There was no electricity in the apartment, but once he’d pulled up the blackout blinds there was enough fire-reflected light to see by. Nothing reminded him of Effi though, until he came upon the blouse she’d been wearing that night in the Stettin Station buffet, when she’d calmly announced that she wasn’t going with him. He lay down on the bed, and succumbed to the urge to sniff the pillow. He was hoping for the familiar scent of her hair, but all he could smell was damp.

  Elsewhere in the flat he found clothes belonging to a child and another, bigger woman. But there was nothing to tell him anything more – no writing, no letters, only a collection of pencil drawings. He doubted they were Effi’s – he couldn’t remember her ever drawing anything. The other woman’s probably – they seemed too good for a child. He leafed through them – they were like a visual diary of the city’s fall.

  In the Potsdam Station shelter it was almost midnight, and Effi had only just finished another long stint in the hospital. Now that the fighting was only a few kilometres away the medical staff were even busier, and the proportion of wounded soldiers to civilians was growing ever-higher. The presence of so many field grey uniforms had unfortunately attracted the attention of those in black, many of whom were now patrolling the corridors in search of possible deserters.

  She had sent Rosa to bed an hour ago, and was on the way to join her when a young man on a corridor trolley caught her eye. He was wearing only undershorts, and his pale legs and trunk contrasted markedly with the dark stains of dried blood that covered his arms, neck and face.

  It was Paul.

  His eyes were closed but he was breathing well enough. The grim expression on his face gave her pause, but only for the briefest of moments. She had known him since he was eight years old. He would never betray her.

  She touched him lightly on the shoulder, and his eyes jerked open. ‘Paul,’ she said softly. ‘Remember me? Dagmar?’

  He took in the familiar face, the nurse’s uniform, and realised he was smiling. ‘I saw you at Fürstenwalde Station,’ he said.

  ‘I saw you too. Aren’t you cold? Where are your clothes?’

  ‘A bit. My uniform’s underneath the trolley. I had to take it off – it’s covered in blood and brains.’

  ‘Why, what happened to you?’

  ‘A shell. I was on Grossbeeren Strasse. I’ve no idea how I got here.’ He could see the expression on Werner’s face. ‘A friend had just been killed…’ he began, but let the sentence die.

  She saw the pain pass across his eyes. ‘I’ll get you a blanket,’ she told him. ‘I’ll only be a moment.’

  While she was gone he levered himself into a sitting position. He felt strange, but that was hardly surprising. Everything else seemed in working order. He vaguely remembered a doctor. He’d also been covered in blood.

  Effi came back with a blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders.

  ‘How did you end up here?’ he asked her.

  ‘A long story.’

  ‘It must be,’ he said with a wryness that reminded her of his father.

  ‘One for later,’ she warned him, as one of the doctors went past.

  ‘You know that Dad escaped?’ he whispered.

&nb
sp; ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘No,’ Effi admitted. ‘But I expect he’ll arrive with the first Americans, whenever that is.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ Paul asked, without really meaning to.

  It felt like the question had asked itself.

  ‘That’s another long story.’

  ‘Okay,’ he agreed. He could hardly believe she was standing there in front of him. ‘I saw Uncle Thomas a few days ago,’ he told her.

  Her face lit up, only to darken as Paul outlined the circumstances.

  ‘He was planning to survive,’ he concluded, as if that alone might save his uncle. He suddenly realised that a young girl had joined them, the one he’d seen with Effi on the Fürstenwalde platform.

  ‘You’re supposed to be asleep,’ Effi scolded her, without any noticeable effect. It was hard to imagine Effi as an effective chastiser of children.

  ‘You must be Paul,’ the girl said in a very grown-up voice.

  ‘I am. And who are you?’

  ‘I’m Rosa at the moment. Rosa Borinski. My aunt has told me all about you. She’s been taking care of me since my mother died.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Effi agreed. ‘Look, I’ll leave you two together while I do what I can with Paul’s uniform. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Rosa said, looking suddenly shy.

  ‘So what did Effi – Dagmar – tell you about me?’ Paul asked her.

  ‘Oh, that you like football. And models of ships. And that it was difficult for you having an English father.’

  It had been, Paul thought. For a while it had coloured everything. And now it seemed utterly irrelevant.

  ‘And that you lost your mother like I did.’

  ‘It’s all true,’ Paul admitted. His mother’s death seemed a long time ago.