The Weather in Berlin

by Ward Just

  Herr Greenwood?

  The steward offered the tray, and this time Dix took champagne.

  A rush from the engines, and the jet motored forward. The pilot said something unintelligible; progress, apparently. Dix did not know what he would find when he returned to his wife. For these months they had lived inside different narratives. His had nothing to do with hers and she, too, was in the dark. Each had slept without the other. He had found an audience and she was not a part of it—but that was how they had always lived, never with the whole story but with the scenario. Not the fact, but the shadow of the fact. In any case, he had nothing left to do in Berlin. Shaking hands on the front stoop of Mommsen House that morning, Henry Belknap had smiled and said, You’ve closed all your accounts, congratulations.

  And what happens now, Dix?

  I have no idea. Go home. Make it up to Claire.

  You’ll be back, Henry said.

  Maybe so, Dix said.

  You’ve found a home in Berlin. I can tell.

  It suits my temperament, that’s true.

  You think Berlin’s an audience.

  You don’t get away with a lot, Dix said.

  You don’t get away with anything in Berlin, Henry replied.

  Dix massaged his knee, Claire still in his thoughts. He reminded himself again that they were in the movie business, shadow puppets, a bright flickering light, and a happy ending. When you didn’t like the line, you rewrote it. When you didn’t like the shot, you did it over. Could you lower your voice when you call him darling? He looked forward to describing Berlin to Claire, the people he had met and the stories they told him, Chef Werner and Willa and Karen Hupp and the others, Henry and Frau Munn, and Jana most of all. Harry Greenwood was there somewhere, too, with his tales of wartime interrogations and John Huston’s red wagon. The story belonged to whoever could tell it best, and Berlin was a narrators Utopia, the story of the world, ruin and rebirth. No question, the weather caught you off guard. The wind came from all directions and never let up. A prewar wind was replaced in an instant by a freshening breeze from just yesterday. But the old wind lingered, never absent, a part of every day, and in that way you were reminded of the dawn of the modern world. He believed that German weather was motion picture weather, you could make of it whatever you wished. The audience was there, too.

  He did believe that sooner or later she would be in touch, a visit or a telephone call as unexpected as the afternoon in Wannsee when he did not recognize her voice or her name. She would never return to a normal life, and in time she would make another film, either with him or with someone else. Certainly she would recover from her injuries, otherwise they never would have released her from the hospital. Still, he was worried about her lopsided look, her face asymmetrical and at odds. They seemed sympathetic toward her. The doctor was very sympathetic. It was hard not to be. She was full of life, that one. She would never surrender. And when Jana found herself boxed in, she said goodbye. A person had the right to go away when she chose to, and the absolute right to accept the consequences, and return at a time of her own choosing.

  She cherished privacy, and surely there was something to be said for possessing the identity of an inconspicuous people, a people ever on the margins of an environment organized and supervised by—another breed of cat, as Harry used to say. Of course there were disadvantages. It was hard to climb other people’s stairs. You had to keep your nerve and maintain a conscious equilibrium so that you could never be overthrown. Mischief was in there somewhere, too, an appreciation of life’s sinister aspects and an urge to get even, if only for an hour, to let them know that you were still among them. Dix lifted his glass and wished her well on her journey, hoping she would return soon. He seemed to need her, not as a lover but as a provocateur. He admired her conscience, and the insubordination that went with it. Almost always, when you were attracted to someone, you saw the person you were not.

  About the Author

  WARD JUST’s sixteen previous novels include Exiles in the Garden, Forgetfulness, the National Book Award finalist Echo House, A Dangerous Friend, winner of the Cooper Prize for fiction from the Society of American Historians, and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award and a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.