Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  Effi struck one, and tried to make sense of the instruments. ‘There might be some,’ she said hesitantly.

  ‘Well, get out of there and let me have a go.’

  Effi did as she was told, and waited with Rosa outside the garage. ‘Can we just take a car?’ Rosa asked doubtfully.

  ‘As long as we bring it back,’ Effi reassured her. She had almost given up on Annaliese’s promise when the car’s engine sprang noisily to life. There was a grinding of gears, and it inched forward out of the garage, a beaming Annaliese at the wheel. ‘Your taxi, Madam!’

  Effi climbed in beside her, Rosa in the back.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ Annaliese asked.

  ‘I’d like to go home,’ Effi said.

  ‘Me too,’ Rosa agreed from the rear.

  ‘And you can stay with us until it’s over,’ Effi suggested to Annaliese.

  ‘I’ll think about it. I might just drive on to Spandau once I’ve delivered you two. If that’s all right with you. You found the car.’

  ‘You’re welcome to it.’

  They drove slowly down the mews, turned right at the end, and soon found themselves on Lützow Strasse. Two military lorries went by in the opposite direction, but the once-busy avenue was otherwise empty of traffic. The moonlight was strong enough to steer by, and Annaliese turned off the lights. Driving round Lützowplatz she struck two pieces of rubble in quick succession, which shook everyone up but failed to slow the Hanomag.

  It was ten in the evening but felt like four in the morning. Distant explosions flared in the wing mirrors but the world ahead seemed fast asleep. They arced round the ruined Memorial Church and under the railway bridge on Hardenberg Strasse. There was a barricade up ahead, so at Effi’s suggestion Annaliese took a tight left turn and drove back down to Kant Strasse. A right fork at Savignyplatz brought them onto Grolman Strasse, which was just about passable.

  ‘Our place is just round the corner,’ Effi said hopefully, as they passed the ruins of the Schiller Theatre. If Grolman Strasse was anything to go by, the area had taken a pasting in her absence.

  Annaliese stopped the car a prudent few metres short of the intersection, and examined the petrol gauge by the light of a struck match. It had risen slightly. ‘I’ll keep going,’ she decided. ‘It can’t be much more than five kilometres from here, and Gerd’s family could probably do with some help – they’re quite old. And if they don’t I can try and reach the Americans.’

  The two women embraced, and Effi got out. Rosa primly reminded Annaliese that she had to take the car back once the war was over, and looked somewhat put out when the nurse just laughed.

  She inched the car round the corner and, once reassured, accelerated out of sight.

  Effi and Rosa followed. Bismarck Strasse had suffered fewer recent depredations than Grolman, and their building was still standing. This was reassuring, even though life was now lived in the shelter. Descending the steps, the first person they met was Frau Pflipsen, happily puffing on a Turkish cigarette. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘Your brother’s been here since yesterday.’

  ‘My brother?’ Effi echoed. ‘Which one?’ she improvised. ‘I have so many.’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s upstairs in your flat, I think. I’ve told him several times what a risk he’s taking, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate the danger. I don’t suppose they’ve had much bombing in Beeskow.’

  ‘No, probably not. I’ll go up and get him. But you stay here with Frau Pflipsen,’ she told Rosa. ‘I won’t be long.’

  Effi hurried back up the steps, across the yard and into her building. It had to be Aslund, she thought. But what was he doing here? Was he on the run, after all this time? It didn’t seem likely.

  She trudged wearily up the stairs, and opened the unlocked door.

  It was John, sitting in the chair by the window, apparently asleep. She let out a small gasp of delight. She couldn’t believe it. Where had he come from? And how? She rushed towards him.

  As she placed her hands on his shoulders his eyes opened.

  ‘Effi,’ he said, as if everything was right with the world. She looked thinner, exhausted, about ten years older. He had never seen anything half so beautiful.

  He stood up, and they dissolved into each other’s arms.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked after a few moments.

  ‘Zarah told me where you lived.’

  ‘But she doesn’t…’

  ‘She saw you in the street once and followed you. She needed to know where you lived.’

  Effi shook her head in amazement. ‘But how did you find Zarah? How did you get to Berlin?’

  The Russians brought me. Would you believe I jumped from a plane out beyond Gatow?

  She couldn’t help laughing. ‘Oh John, this is so wonderful.’

  ‘I had to get to you,’ he said simply. They stood there, hands on each other’s shoulders, staring into each other’s eyes.

  ‘I saw Paul yesterday,’ Effi said.

  He gripped her shoulders a little tighter. ‘Where? Is he okay?’

  ‘It was in the big shelter at Potsdam Station. He was in the hospital, but he wasn’t badly hurt – just a concussion. He’s in uniform, of course, but he’d lost touch with his unit. Some SS bastards told him to report in at the Zoo Bunker, and I suppose he’s still there.’

  Russell’s elation was edged with panic – his son was alive, but still at risk. And only a couple of kilometres away. ‘How did he seem?’

  Effi grimaced. ‘It’s hard to say. He was the same old Paul, and he wasn’t. He’s so much bigger than I remember, but that’s… he seemed overwhelmed, but what young man wouldn’t be after what they’ve all been through? You know that Ilse and Matthias were killed?’

  ‘No, no I didn’t. When? How?’

  ‘Last year in a car accident. Out in the country. They reached the crest of a hill at the same moment as an army lorry. They were both killed outright.’

  ‘Christ.’ Russell had a sudden picture of Ilse in the foreign comrades’ canteen, all those years ago. Paul would have been devastated. An utterly selfish thought crossed his mind: his son would need him now. ‘Has Paul forgiven me?’ he asked Effi.

  ‘I don’t know. He asked after you. He didn’t sound angry.’

  A shell exploded some way up the street, momentarily lighting up the room.

  ‘Where did you see Zarah?’ Effi asked. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘“All right” might be an exaggeration. Jens tried to interest her in some suicide pills, so she walked out on him.’

  ‘Ten years too late – no, I suppose Lothar was worth it. But… So she’s back in Schmargendorf. Aren’t the Russians there already?’

  ‘Yes. She was expecting them. She… well, I don’t think she’s under any illusions. She told me she plans to stay alive for Lothar.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Effi murmured, as another explosion echoed down the street. But there was nothing she could do for her sister – the Russians would be between them by now. ‘We really should go down to the shelter,’ she told Russell.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Why were you up here?’ she asked, taking his hand.

  He smiled. ‘Would you believe I wanted to be close to you?’

  ‘I think I might,’ she said, and gave him a kiss. ‘But we must go down,’ she insisted, as another shell exploded, closer this time. ‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ she added, as they descended the stairs.

  ‘Not a new boyfriend, I hope.’

  ‘No, just a new member of the family.’

  ‘What?’

  Effi paused at the top of the basement steps. ‘She’s seven years old and Jewish, and all her family are dead. I’ve more or less adopted her.’

  ‘Right,’ Russell said lightly. He could see a small fair-haired girl hovering at the bottom of the steps, staring up at them.

  They went down. ‘This is John,’ Effi told the girl, after checking that no one else was in earshot. ‘But we�
�ll pretend he’s my brother until the war ends.’ She turned to Russell. ‘And this is Rosa. We’ve had a lot of adventures together.’

  The girl gave Russell a hopeful look, and offered a hand to shake.

  Russell took it. ‘I hear you’re part of the family now,’ he said with a smile. ‘And I’d love to hear about all your adventures.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rosa told him, ‘but we have to wait until after the war is over. We sleep through here,’ she added, leading the way into the large basement room. Most of the inhabitants had already turned in, and one of two burning candles was snuffed out as they wended their way to the far corner. ‘Our beds are still here, but someone has slept in mine,’ Rosa whispered.

  ‘That would be me,’ Russell whispered back. ‘I didn’t know it was yours.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  Rosa and Effi took one camp bed, Russell the other, which suited the child rather better than him.

  Despite trying hard to stay awake – she didn’t want to feel left out, Effi realised – Rosa was soon asleep. The two grown-ups conversed in whis-pers, and she told him about Paul’s meeting with his uncle. ‘Thomas is also planning to survive,’ Effi remembered. ‘Like Zarah.’

  The shelling outside was much more sporadic, and Russell realised he wouldn’t need much encouragement to let desire get the better of sense.

  He got none. ‘I can’t leave her down here on her own,’ Effi said, in answer to his suggestion of a trip upstairs. If she woke up and found we were both gone… well…’

  ‘You’re right,’ Russell told her. ‘It was a stupid idea.’

  ‘Not that stupid,’ she said, carefully disentangling herself from the sleeping child. ‘And I can at least join you over there.’

  But entwined and kissing on the narrow camp bed, the issue became rather more pressing. ‘Have the customs changed since 1941?’ Russell eventually whispered. ‘Is lovemaking in air-raid shelters permitted these days?’

  ‘Not between brother and sister.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So we’ll have to be very quiet.’

  No longer a road leading home

  April 28 – May 2

  It had been light for about an hour, and already the city centre was taking a frightful hammering. As Russell and two other men from the shelter worked their way down Grolman Strasse in search of a working standpipe, the sky to their left seemed choked with Soviet planes, the rise and fall of whining shells overlapping each other like a gramophone nee-dle stuck in mid-symphony. In the centre of it all, the Zoo Bunker Gun Tower loomed above the ruined city, giving and taking fire, half cloaked in drifting smoke.

  Paul was inside it.

  Russell remembered what Effi had said about the boy seeming overwhelmed. He couldn’t think of a better word to describe his own feelings. Seeing Effi again had filled him with joy, yet left untouched the dread of losing his son.

  And Thomas too. If anyone deserved to survive this war then Thomas did.

  A crowd up ahead suggested water, which proved to be the case. Join-ing the queue, they stood there scanning the sky like everyone else, knowing that a bomb could perhaps be outrun, that a shell would give no warning.

  Neither fell, and soon they were hurrying back up the street with their containers, trying not to slosh any water overboard.

  Effi was waiting at the bottom of the steps, looking almost angry. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been so long.’

  Russell put the containers down, and explained that the usual standpipe had taken a direct hit. ‘We had to go further afield. One of the men I was with remembered a tap on Grolman.’

  ‘I…’ she started to say, and just pulled him to her.

  ‘There were soldiers here while you were gone,’ Rosa announced from behind her.

  ‘Two of them,’ Effi confirmed. ‘They said the Russians are in Westkreuz, so it shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  Effi shrugged. ‘Who knows? They seemed lost, but they wouldn’t abandon their uniforms, so Frau Essen had to ask them to leave.’ The three of them made their way back to their corner. There was a drawing on Rosa’s bed, one of Effi that almost brought tears to his eyes. Russell realised that the girl had drawn the pictures he had seen upstairs. ‘This is wonderful,’ he told Rosa. ‘We must get it framed, and hang it in our new house.’

  Effi smiled at that, and Rosa’s face lit up. ‘I can do one of you too,’ the girl said. ‘If you’d like. But I promised Frau Pflipsen I’d draw her next. ’

  ‘Whenever you have time,’ Russell assured her. It was noisy in the shelter, and while Rosa was across the room immortalising her latest subject, he and Effi had the chance to talk. During the night she had told him where Rosa had come from, and now he asked her if Erik Aslund was still in Berlin.

  ‘As far I know,’ she replied.

  ‘We may need him,’ Russell said quietly. He made sure that they were not being overheard. ‘Look, I’ve been doing some thinking. The Nazis are history, or soon will be. We can forget the bastards, thank God. Germany will be divided up between the Russians, the Americans and the British. And maybe the French. They’ve already drawn the boundaries. The same goes for Berlin. It’ll be right in the middle of the Russian zone, but the city itself will be shared out.

  ‘But not for a while,’ he went on. ‘The Russians will want to grab everything they can, so they’ll take their time. They’ll say the city isn’t properly secure – something like that.’

  ‘Whose bit are we in now?’ Effi asked out of curiosity.

  ‘Probably the British, but what I’m saying is that they won’t be here for weeks, maybe even months. It’s the Russians we’ll have to deal with, and they’ll be eager to talk to me.’

  ‘Why?’ Effi asked. ‘You still haven’t told me why they brought you here.’

  He went through the story – the American decision to let the Russians take Berlin, his own trip to Moscow, the offer of inclusion in the Soviet team seeking out atomic secrets. He told her what had happened to Kazankin and Gusakovsky at the Kaiser Institute, and how he and Varennikov had hidden out in Thomas’s house.

  ‘There are plans for an atomic bomb buried in Thomas’s garden?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘In Hanna’s vegetable patch, to be precise.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And I’m the only one who knows where they are,’ he added. ‘Varen-nikov was killed a few days later.’

  ‘How?’

  Russell sighed. ‘A train fell on him.’

  ‘A train fell on him,’ she repeated.

  ‘I know. But that’s what happened.’

  ‘All right. But what’s the problem? You just hand the plans over to the Russians – no one else need know.’

  ‘That might be the sensible thing to do. Or it might not. I can think of two good reasons why it wouldn’t be. First off, the Russians might want to make absolutely sure that I don’t tell anyone else. Like the British or the Americans.’

  ‘But that’s silly,’ Effi protested. ‘You could never tell them that you’d just helped the Russians to an atomic bomb. They’d put you in prison.’

  ‘Or hang me for treason. I know that and you know that, but the NKVD doesn’t like loose ends.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ She felt crestfallen. Overnight it had seemed like the worst might be over.

  ‘I’ve been thinking I need to bargain with them,’ he went on.

  ‘The papers for your life,’ she guessed.

  ‘Yes, but more than that. If Paul and Thomas survive, they’ll end up in Soviet camps. Zarah might be arrested too – she is the wife of a prominent Nazi, and the Russians are certainly feeling vindictive. So I thought I’d offer them the papers in exchange for the whole family.’

  Effi smiled, but looked dubious. ‘You know the Russians better than I do, but won’t they think that a bit of a cheek? And what’s to stop them beating the location out of you? Or just agreeing and then reneging on the bargain on
ce they have the papers?’

  ‘Nothing, at the moment. But that’s where your Swedish friend might be useful.’ Russell outlined what he had in mind, and she began to see a glimmer of hope. ‘But first we wait,’ he said. ‘The Soviets gave me a letter to use when making contact, and I hope it’ll offer us – you – some sort of protection when the ordinary troops arrive. Once the battle’s over, I’ll find someone senior to approach.’

  ‘That sounds good,’ Effi agreed. When they woke up that morning, she had half expected him to set off in search of Paul.

  ‘I thought about heading over to the Zoo Bunker,’ he said, as if reading her mind. ‘But even if I got there safely, and no one arrested me on the spot, what could I do? I can’t order Paul to come home. He’s not fourteen anymore, and he’ll have a much better idea of the situation down there than I have. If he wants to desert, and he thinks he can get away with it, then he will.’

  ‘He has this address,’ Effi reminded him.

  It was soon after eleven in the morning that an overheard conversation in the soldiers’ canteen pointed Paul in the direction of escape. There were, it seemed, over five hundred corpses in the two towers, not to mention a vast and growing collection of amputated limps. All needed burying, but finding men willing to leave the safety of the walls and dig the necessary graves, while Soviet gunners cratered and re-cratered the area concerned, was far from easy. Why risk the living for the dead?, was most people’s response to any such request.

  A few thought differently. Some were claustrophobic, others beaten by the smell or undone by the stress of waiting. Some, like Paul, saw no point in dying to defend a last fortress when everything else was lost. If they were going to die, then better to die outside, where at least you could move and breathe. And where there was always the chance you might slip through a crack and keep on living.

  There were around twenty of them all told, lined up outside the packed mortuary with rags across their nostrils to keep out the appalling smell. Each pair carried a bloody stretcher, but Paul, finding himself odd man out, was given two large sacks of arms, legs and heads to carry. He tried to keep the sacks off the ground, but they were simply too heavy, and once outside the walls he settled for dragging them across the grass.