The Weather in Berlin

by Ward Just

  There was corruption, Sophie said.

  No more than in other states, Karen observed.

  My grandfather was a casualty, too, Reinhold went on. When they burned the house, they burned him, thinking he was one of the family. A natural mistake. He had the bearing of a cavalry officer, even as an old man in his eighties, handlebar mustache, six feet tall, not an ounce of fat on him. He was a marksman. In the evenings he smoked a clay pipe, just like the cavalry officers in Fontanel novels. They burned him at the stake, Herr Greenwood. Reinhold turned from the window, opening his mouth to say something more, then decided against it.

  How did you hear of his last days? Greenwood asked.

  A friend, Reinhold said.

  One of the farmhands, Sophie explained.

  A witness, Reinhold said.

  The last year of the war was terrible, you can’t imagine it, Sophie said. The worst winter in a hundred years, no food, no heat, burning and bloodshed, rape, and not only in Pomerania. Here in our small village also. No one knew of us, no one cared. Who were we? The winter went on forever. The last battle of our war was fought just over that ridge. She pointed out the window to the low lines of hills and the river just visible beyond. They fought for days and days as if the future hung in the balance, but the future was already decided. I can’t imagine what they were thinking. No one retreated, but when the lines finally broke they came right through the village, first our army, then the Red Army.

  They weren’t thinking anything, Reinhold said.

  They were animals, Sophie said.

  Enough of that, Reinhold said. Our guests have heard enough.

  He gave the fire a last nudge and walked to the hall closet, bringing out heavy coats and scarves, laying them in a bundle on the chair near the door. He added a pile of woolen mittens and ski caps.

  He said, The sun is out. We will take a walk now.

  11

  GREENWOOD walked with Reinhold down the path to the road, where they waited for the women. Reinhold had slung a twelve-gauge shotgun over his shoulder. They stood facing the gatehouse, the barn and the main house high in the distance. Reinhold was saying something about the village, its population and agriculture, its history and economy. Greenwood was half listening, and when his eye strayed to an upstairs window he saw Ingeborg glittering in the sun, her glass ornaments dancing with light; she looked like a princess in a fairy tale. She leaned against the windowpane and stared into the middle distance, swaying to some mysterious rhythm. When the sun’s rays flooded the window she seemed to burst into fire, and then a cloud intervened and she became only a troubled girl staring into the desolate landscape, her grandfather and a stranger in her line of sight. She slowly lifted her fingers to her mouth and drew deeply on a cigarette, smoke spilling from her mouth like steam from a cauldron.

  There is no work for her, Reinhold said.

  Does she want to work?

  No, Reinhold admitted.

  Isn’t it difficult? So much unemployment—

  She doesn’t know how, Reinhold said. None of them do.

  She’s waiting for us to leave, he added bitterly. Then she may leave also, without making false explanations to me as to where she is going and who she is going with. What her plans are, and when she will be home.

  Teenagers, Dixon said.

  Ingeborg is twenty-four, Reinhold answered. He turned abruptly and set off down the road at a brisk pace, the women strolling far behind, Willa and Anya in heavy coats, Karen and Sophie in sweaters. They all wore bright scarves and ski hats. In short order, Reinhold turned off the road and onto a cart path. He increased the pace until Dix, leaning heavily on his cane, began to lag. The land fell away from the path in a gentle slope. Here and there were the buildings of working farms, small holdings from the look of them, the fields carelessly cultivated. To love this terrain would take a stubborn pride, along with the knowledge of the bones of your ancestors underfoot. Dix looked for some variation in the landscape, and began then to wonder about the effect of terrain on human personality. Did vast distances, brutal sun, and the monotonous contours of sand account for the sublime hospitality of the desert Arabs? This land would induce stoicism, a steely patience and resolve. Perhaps also a feeling of undeserved inferiority. Dix thought of his own upbringing in the country north of Chicago, the rambling house on three acres of land, the lake nearby, huge oak trees flanking the driveway, some of them two hundred years old and more. They were flourishing when Lincoln was a boy. Of course he found the physical surroundings consoling; it was the people who were monotonous, so as soon as he could flee, he fled. He believed the North Shore simple arithmetic when he craved higher mathematics, and only later did he understand that much was concealed behind the closed doors and complacent conversations. The abundance of material things seemed to make nature dispassionate, but that was before he learned to listen carefully, especially to girls who danced barefoot under a summer moon. So much for believing what was in front of your own eyes, and that held true for this wasteland in eastern Germany, frozen under its prewar sun, remarkable only as the scene of the last battle of the Third Reich. What he saw now was anonymous farmland reputed to conceal the bones of a hundred thousand infantrymen, Germans here, Russians there, all far from home. Eyesight yielded only so much. All the rest was imagination if you were a stranger, and memory if you were not.

  This was beautiful country for filming, though. You would be able to suggest the ghosts rising from the earth, beginning with Attila and later the Teutonic Knights and shuffling forward to the last months of the Second World War. A director would be tempted to film in black and white but that would be a mistake. Film in color, but mute the colors so that the audience would be unable to identify them exactly. A film of straight lines including the human forms, women especially. Dix watched a farmer emerge from his barn, look at the sky, and walk back inside again. He seemed to move with a suspicious lightness of step and Dix wondered what was going on inside the barn. He had come to a rise in the path and now could see the Oder, old and slow-moving, circling the hills as a belt circles a belly. The color of the river was gray and the fields beyond were light brown, with drifts of gray snow in the shady spots. The washed-out sky was empty except for a lid of clouds to the east, Poland under cover once again.

  So, what do you think? Reinhold was sitting on a bench at the base of a tree stump smoking a briar pipe. The women were behind them, gathered around Sophie, who was pointing at something on the horizon.

  Greenwood said, I was wondering how it would film. The shape of the land, the colors, the aura of it.

  You are thinking of filming here?

  No, Greenwood said. But it’s my business. It’s what I do. I look at things and wonder how they would film.

  An unusual landscape, Reinhold said. And it has a soul.

  That’s what makes it interesting.

  It has a history, Reinhold said.

  I know it does.

  The Russians were just there, he said, pointing vaguely in the direction of the river. One million men in Zhukov’s army and another million under Konev, and as many more on the way. We could not kill them fast enough. They came on and on from everywhere in the Soviet Union. Some of them looked like animals, mixed Slav and Asian blood. Probably some of them had Genghis Khan’s blood, Tamerlane’s blood, even Attila and the murderer Alexander. Millions swarming from the steppes of Russia and beyond, well equipped, well fed, brutal men nourished by centuries of resentment and blood lust. Against them we had old men and boys too young to have hair on their nuts. And their casualties were twice ours. In the official version we were the ones who took casualties. In the official version the Wehrmacht was outfought and outgeneraled. They taught us the official version for fifty years. The Red Army liberated us from the fascists and millions died. Even so, the Americans arranged a sanctuary in the West, and in due course the Americans had both an atomic bomb and a spy network, thanks to the fascists. And I should know. That was the history I taught. Seelo
w, it was called. The Battle of Seelow.

  Reinhold’s voice had risen but now he looked off into the woods, gesturing wearily.

  Our boys fought like tigers. They knew the war was lost and still they fought. They fought until they ran out of ammunition or were overwhelmed. They were overwhelmed by the Dark Ages. They looked up from their trenches and saw the tenth century come to life once again.

  My wife is out there somewhere.

  She went off one morning and never returned. She was searching for food. A neighbor saw her on the road and next she entered the forest and that was the last anyone saw of her. After the war, I met Sophie and we married.

  My brother, too, out there somewhere. You can replace a wife but not a brother.

  My brother was just fifteen. They came for him one afternoon, boys barely older than he was. They had a sergeant with them but the sergeant was useless, shell-shocked and incoherent. They gave my brother a uniform that was too small for him and a choice of weapons. He chose a SIG 710. That’s a machine gun with a barleycorn sight and a tripod. It weighed more than ten kilos. My brother could barely lift it but he accepted the responsibility. They gave him instruction in our back yard while the sergeant looked on, talking nonsense. They were a dozen or more deciding that they could halt the Red Army. You know boys, they wanted to do what their fathers and brothers had done. Now it was their turn to save the Reich. We could hear the explosions and see the smoke in the east. When they were satisfied that my brother knew how to aim and fire, they marched away. But not before shooting the useless sergeant. We never saw my brother again, and in the horror and confusion of those last days, we knew we would never discover what happened, where he died and in what circumstances. I am sure he fought well.

  But they did not take you, Dix said.

  I was not at home.

  And that was the history you taught, Dix said.

  I taught what followed the war, Reinhold said. That was what high school students needed to know. I taught for twenty years, and then I was able to join the administration, where Sophie was. We in the administration took care of one another.

  Reinhold continued to gaze east as he talked, and it was hard for Dix to know how much Reinhold believed of what he had said. He seemed to be speaking with irony. He was silent for a moment and then he laughed. I taught school during the day and listened to Willa in the evening. Willa and her news. She spoke softly over the air and the effect was like a German lullaby, carrying us off into Traumland, nothing to fear in the night, Comrade Honecker was in charge, defeating the enemy within. Why are you here really, Herr Greenwood?

  Walking with you, Dix said.

  I mean, in our Germany.

  I know what you mean. I’m visiting. I’m a tourist.

  No one tours East Germany.

  I was asked, so I came.

  You should go where the other Americans go, Munich, the Black Forest, Heidelberg.

  I have an interest in difficult regions, Dix said. And if I had not come with you today, I would know nothing of the last days of the war, and your brother’s death, and your wife’s.

  Stand still, Reinhold said suddenly. He unslung the shotgun from his shoulder and stood holding it in both hands like an ax, peering down the hedgerow to the forest. The light was so pale it was hard to tell where the ragged hedgerow ended and the forest began; an unmarked borderland, Dix thought. Reinhold raised his chin and narrowed his eyes, his rabbit nose beginning to twitch. He moved off lightly down the hedgerow, motioning for Greenwood to follow, and follow quietly. The ground was hard underfoot as they stepped over roots and broken branches, here and there small holes that the night animals made. The slope was steeper than it looked and Greenwood stepped clumsily, leaning on his cane, trying to avoid the roots and the animal holes. On both sides of the hedgerow the field looked to be indifferently tended, the furrows uneven and filled with small white rocks so soft they disintegrated when Greenwood stepped on them. Ragged pieces of iron had leached to the surface among the rocks. In one place the furrows ended, as if the farmer had become exhausted or bored by the chore and had simply abandoned it for another day or not at all. Dix could hear Reinhold’s breathing, and then the German halted, his head cocked to one side, listening, kneeling with his hand at his ear.

  Can you smell him?

  No, Greenwood said. Who?

  Animal, Reinhold said. Boar, I think. Listen.

  A heavy rustle in the treeline thirty yards ahead caused Greenwood to start, then freeze where he stood.

  Strange, Reinhold said. His voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. They do not usually show themselves. He sighted along his shotgun, then lowered it, and when next he spoke his words sounded memorized, as if he had last uttered them at a lectern or in front of a blackboard. He said, They are discreet as politicians, our boar. They believe in mystery and power concealed. They make noise but they do not move unless forced. They live in the deep forest and have no cause to leave, everything they need is within range. Because they are seldom seen, they have become the matter of myth, like wood spirits. Old, old beasts, you can find their forms on the walls of European caves thousands of years old, the snout and the tusks unmistakable. They have not evolved, you see. Instinct and form, unchanged. They are fast, fast as a horse, and strong as a bull. An excellent sense of smell. They guide themselves by smell. And they are irascible and impatient. The meat of the boar’s head is a delicacy, tremendously succulent. This one is close by. He is disturbed, watching us with his bad eyesight and smelling us also, our stink. We have invaded his domain, and that he cannot allow. So he is making up his mind. What is to be done?

  Let’s leave him to it, Greenwood said.

  No, Reinhold said. What we start, we finish.

  I can smell him, Reinhold added.

  And Greenwood could, too, a rich scent of musk and dirt, a kind of wormy breath from the grave; if corruption had an odor, this would be it. The rustling ceased and what they heard now was the thin breeze riffling the brittle branches of the oaks and lindens of the forest. The birds returned, fat black crows common to woodlands everywhere. Reinhold moved his shoulders and began to advance one step at a time, angling away from the hedgerow and into the uneven furrows of the field. He seemed to want a clear line of fire and now snapped the shotgun off safe and waited, his briar pipe—cold these many minutes—clicking between his teeth, wagging up and down like a semaphore flag. The boar’s odor thickened but the beast himself remained invisible. The crows were settled in the tops of the trees and now began to call each to each, spectators signaling that intruders were near.

  Show yourself, Reinhold said.

  We should let him be, Greenwood said.

  One of the legends, Reinhold said. Earth had been taken prisoner by a demon at the bottom of the sea. One of the gods took the form of a boar forty miles wide and four thousand miles long. He dove to the seabed and rescued Earth and brought her to the surface cradled in his left arm. He was venerated thereafter.

  Boars have always been associated with the otherworld, Reinhold added.

  He appeared indecisive, moving his head this way and that as if determining the direction of the wind. Then he was suddenly at the edge of the forest and sliding between the trees, moving with the agility of an infantry scout. In seconds he was lost to view, swallowed up without a backward glance or a word of explanation. Greenwood looked back up the hill and saw the women gathered in a little cluster. Something in their postures—they were standing close together, their heads drawn forward as they watched the drama below—reminded Greenwood of wives awaiting the return of their men from the front, and then something else that suggested widows, because they were standing on ground that had been soaked with blood. Bones and iron had leached to the surface, residue of the great spring offensive of 1945. This field was a giant ossuary disguised as a simple farm. No wonder the plowman had given it up, stopped where he was and returned to wherever he had come from. Greenwood moved his foot and dislodged a twisted piece of brass
and what looked like the remains of a leather belt. Willa gave a desultory wave, then turned to say something to the others. Greenwood could hear Karen Hupp’s mocking laughter drift down the hillside, mixed with the cries of birds, now scattering in ragged flight. When he heard a low whistle, he knew that Reinhold had found his prey.

  Greenwood trudged down the slope and entered the forest, feeling the damp at once. The interior was dark and the boar’s stench overpowering. He stepped cautiously, deeply uneasy. He was conscious of his foreign status; he was unaware of the boar’s mythic stature. He had no business in this forest. The closeness suggested the claustrophobia of the ancient caves with the drawings of bison and boar and naked hunters with spears, some otherworld concealed from outsiders. Then he noticed the remains of a fire in a shallow trench, and next to the embers, a rusted bayonet.