Berlin: A Novel

by Pierre Frei

  Pastor Steffen had come up with a New Testament, exactly the India paper edition that Ben needed. He happily climbed the narrow stairs to the attic room. Ralf finished school an hour earlier and had gone round to his friend Hajo Konig in Onkel-Tom-Strasse, so the coast was clear.

  Ben took the razor blade and the empty packet of Lucky Strikes from the desk drawer. The Yanks usually just tore off a piece of the silver foil to get at their cigarettes, so the outer packet and the seal remained intact, which was the case with this one. Using the blunt side of his penknife, he carefully levered up the bottom of the packet where it was stuck together and removed the silver paper without changing its shape. He put it back in the wrapping the other way up, pushing it up to the level of the seal.

  Carefully, he placed the packet on the table. From the top, it looked virginal again. He opened the New Testament at the Gospel According to St Luke, and cut rectangles the size of the cigarette packet from the paper, going through no more than ten pages at a time.

  Now he had to fill the packet to the right strength and elasticity, round off the long sides around the cigarettes it would appear to contain, and close it with a little glue. Ben weighed his successful piece of work in his hand, satisfied. When his brother came clumping upstairs, he put it in his pocket.

  Ralf was two years younger than Ben. He had an angelic face, but it was deceptive. 'We're going up to the woods at Krumme Lanke tomorrow. Want to come?'

  'What for?' Ben asked cautiously.

  'Hajo knows a hollow in the ground where people go to screw.'

  Ben decided to postpone putting his cigarette packet on the market until the day after tomorrow. 'OK,' he said magnanimously.

  Jutta Weber rubbed dozens of veal schnitzels with garlic, seasoned them with salt and pepper and dusted them with flour, then dipped each in beaten egg and tossed it in breadcrumbs.

  'Garlic, that's a good idea,' Mess Sergeant Jack Panelli said with approval, putting the breadcrumb-coated schnitzels in hot oil. They hissed violently.

  A real Wiener schnitzel should be fried in lard,' she told the chef.

  'What, and have Major Davison thump me round the head with his Torah?' Major Davidson was the garrison rabbi; there were many soldiers of the Jewish faith here. Jack Panelli grinned. Now me, I'm a good Catholic, so you're welcome to make me a real Wiener schnitzel after the kitchen closes. That was a brilliant idea I had, taking you off dishwashing and putting you on the stove. Did I ever tell you you're a damn good cook?'

  'Thanks for the compliment, Jack. My parents run a bar and cafe in Kopenick. They used to serve good home cooking there, and I often helped Mother in the kitchen.'

  Jutta went on with her work. The soldiers came flocking into Club 48 for lunch. Last orders were around one-thirty. Then came the dishwashing, and next preparations for dinner. which took all afternoon. She automatically looked at her watch. but since the beginning of May it had been on the wrist of a pockmarked little Russian who hadn't raped her only because he'd failed to get an erection.

  Sergeant Panelli noticed her glance. 'It's five o'clock.'

  'Five o'clock . . .' Diana Gerold had said that when it was time for Jutta to make tea - Ceylon Orange Pekoe, a thing of the distant past the final year of the war, although now and then she got some from a woman she knew at the Swiss Embassy. Back then, they would sit in the back room of the bookshop in the shopping street, listening to the U-Bahn trains going in and out, while Frau Gerold talked about the new books she had read. There were fewer and fewer of them. Sometimes Jutta thought about Jochen, who was dead.

  Jochen ... A melancholy feeling came over her, but soon changed to busi ness-like determination. She'd go and fetch him home. This was her evening off. A good opportunity.

  As seven approached she took off her white overall, and slipped on the threadbare jacket that had once been part of an elegant tailored suit. She wore it now with a light, pale-blue summer dress that set off her slender brown legs prettily. She cycled the few minutes to Onkel Toms Hiitte, and showed her pass to the sentry at the barrier. As a German employee of the US Army she had access to the prohibited area.

  In the early thirties, a large real-estate company had built a rectangular housing project of two-storey, cast concrete apartments around the U-Bahn station. Schlieffenstrasse formed one of the two long sides of the rectangle. When completed, it was thought too small for the Kaiser's Field Marshal Schlieffen, so it was renamed for a comparatively unknown general called Wilski. She and Jochen had had the two-roomed, ground-floor apartment on the right. Number 47 Wilskistrasse. Today the whole block had been requisitioned.

  Her name was still beside the bell: WEBER. She rang it. The automatic door opener buzzed. A tall, lanky American in shorts and T shirt appeared at the door of the apartment. 'Hey, it's you,' he exclaimed, with pleasure. 'I'm John Ashburner. remember me?' Without his martial helmet and gun, he looked much more attractive than he had on their first, nocturnal meeting.

  'Of course I remember you. captain. I'm Jutta Weber.'

  'You came to see me?'

  'Well, I didn't know you lived here. This used to be our apartment.'

  'Sorry, not my fault. I hope you've found good accommodation somewhere else?'

  'The housing department has given me a little room in Onkel-TomStrasse.'

  'So what can I do for you?'

  'I'd like to have the photo of my husband with his pupils. If it's still here I'd like to take it with me.'

  'Come on in.'

  The picture hung on the left beside the door to the balcony. a group photo in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Tower in the Grunewald. 'The 1939 class outing. It was his last.'

  'He was a schoolteacher?'

  'Yes. There in the middle, that's him. He never came back from Poland. And that was Didi, one of his pupils.' She was about to add something, but decided against it.

  Ashburner took the photograph down from the wall. 'I don't have any right to dispose of requisitioned property, but I'm sure the quartermaster won't mind. Cigarette?'

  'No thanks, I don't smoke.'

  'Would you like a couple of packets all the same?'

  'Why?' she asked coldly.

  'Because you're a pretty young woman.' He didn't hide his admiration.

  'I told you, I don't smoke. And if that's meant as payment in advance for sex, then a couple of packets isn't enough.'

  'Oh, don't be silly. I like you, that doesn't mean I'm about to rape you. I thought we might talk a little, that's all. How about a coffee?' Jutta hesitated. 'This building has six apartments. Most of the tenants are at home at this time of day, so you could easily call for help or jump out of the window. We're on the ground floor here, remember?'

  She laughed because he kept such a straight face. 'Right, a coffee, then. And forgive my reaction. We Germans are over-sensitive these days, it's not easy to get on with us. We're full of self-pity. What did you want to talk to me about?'

  'Oh, you and your life. I know almost nothing about the Germans.'

  While he was boiling water in the kitchen Jutta looked around. The dining table was still there, and Jochen's armchair by the window. The rest was a motley collection of furniture confiscated from elsewhere. The picture over the sideboard showed a younger John Ashburner and an averagely pretty young woman.

  'My wife Ethel. We've been married ten years.' The captain put a tray on the table bearing hot water, cups and a can of condensed milk. There were brown tinfoil one-cup sachets of Nescafe on a plate. 'Take two, that'll make it stronger,' he advised, but Jutta was happy with one. The condensed milk was thick and sweet, so there was no need for sugar. Her host opened an olive-coloured ration tin of biscuits. The lid came off with a sharp crack.

  'What do you do?'

  'I'm a bookseller. What about you? Have you always been a policeman?'

  'Yes, but I'd rather have opened a little restaurant.' He had a dreamy look in his eyes. 'Red check tablecloths, candles in wine bottles on the table. Do you know, I inherited
my great-great-grandma's cookbook she came from Breslau. Tweak the recipes a bit and they'd be sensational today. The real old-fashioned stuff. People like that kind of thing.'

  'So what came of your idea?'

  'Nothing. Ethel was against it. She thought serving other people was beneath her.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry, captain.'

  'Just call me John. We Americans like to use first names.'

  'OK, John then - and call me Jutta.'

  He sipped his coffee and put the cup down. 'What was it like for you, Jutta, when Hitler came along?'

  'We had to throw out a lot of books. Most people didn't notice because they didn't read anyway. Otherwise life went on as usual.' She didn't feel like explaining the last few years to him. He wouldn't have understood anyway. And then the war came.'

  'The Nazis began it.'

  'Could well be.'

  'What were they like - the Nazis?'

  'My father's brother was a PG.'

  'What?' Ashburner didn't know the term.

  'Parteigenosse - Party Comrade. And Uncle Rudi was no cannibal. A lot of people were in the NSDAP. Perfectly ordinary people. My husband was going to join the Party. He hoped it would get him promoted in the teaching profession faster.'

  'What about those camps?'

  'Look, if this is going to be an interrogation, you'd better ask how we liked your air raids. When you heard a rumbling overhead like a furniture van coming closer, you knew there was a plane almost right above you, and when the rumbling stopped you could only pray the bombs would land next door.'

  'Must have been bad,' he conceded. Another coffee? Or would you rather have a whiskey?'

  'Neither, thanks. Why are you so interested in us Germans?'

  'Because you're one. Because you're so different from the women back home.' She felt a pleasant sensation which she tried in vain to suppress. He stood up, as if he was afraid he'd said too much. 'Where can I drive you?'

  'I have my bike with me. It's not far. Thank you very much for the coffee. Shall we see each other again? I have Wednesday evenings off.'

  He liked her directness. 'Seven o'clock beside the guard at the gate?' he suggested.

  'OK, John.' She stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  The clock at the U-Bahn station said just before eleven. Jutta wondered whether to ride straight home, but decided to look in on the Schmidts for a moment. Herr Schmidt was usually up until after midnight. He was a pharmacist, and at the beginning of the war he had buried a crate full of bottles of eau-de-parfum in his cellar. Now he was gradually selling or bartering them. Six hungry children had to be fed. Jutta had wheedled a half pound can of real coffee out of Jack Panelli. It didn't hurt the sergeant, and she got a bottle of genuine eau-de-Cologne in exchange.

  The Schmidts lived on the other side of the prohibited area. It was drizzling slightly. Jutta pushed her bike along the tall fence. Behind it, the electricity was on day and night, people had well-fed faces, young women of the Women's Army Corps wore high-heeled pumps and unladdered stockings, and smoked in the street. She thought of lanky John Ashburner and wondered if she liked him enough to sleep with him, but came to no conclusion.

  A motorbike started up nearby. She jumped back as it rattled past very close to her, headlight suddenly flaring on.

  There was a roll of barbed wire propped against a post. It had probably been left over from building the fence. Jutta screamed. A woman's face, waxen and pale, was staring at her through the coiled wire with wide, dead eyes.

  They ate a hot meal in the evening: dehydrated potato sticks from US supplies, you had to soak them for two days before you could cook them. With a roux made of a little flour and home-grown onions, the dish bore some distant resemblance to potato soup. The family sat around the table and spooned it up in silence.

  Dr Bruno Hellbich tapped his spoon on the side of his plate with annoy ance. 'The neighbours grow real potatoes. They have their own carrots too. And lettuces. Setting you all an example.'

  'Papa, please don't be unfair. We're using every patch of earth in the garden to grow your tobacco,' Inge Dietrich reminded her father.

  'I suppose you'd rather I went and sold the last little bit of our silver on the black market for a few Yank cigarettes?' asked the district councillor, indignant.

  You could smoke less,' suggested his son-in-law in neutral tones.

  For a moment it looked as if they were in for one of Hellbich's furious tirades, which the family found ridiculous rather than terrifying, but his daughter changed the subject. 'Frau Zeidler was in Kalkfurth's, queuing for margarine. She keeps her bread coupons in the drawer of the kitchen table. When she pulled out the drawer the other day all that was left was a heap of tiny shreds of paper. A mouse had been at them. The month's ration for the whole family was gone. She didn't have much hope, but she put the remains in an envelope and took them to the head of the ration-card distribution centre. He laughed like a hyena and gave her replacement coupons straight away, saying he was sure no one would make up a thing like that.'

  It was not a particularly funny story, but it mollified her father. 'Sensible man,' he said. The power went off, and he lit a candle.

  'That Frau Kalkfurth is hard as nails.' His daughter told them about her attempt to get the powdered egg in advance.

  'She's bitter. You can't blame her. Not a very lucky family, the Kalkfurths. They bought the Am Hegewinkel house in '29. It was a better place than the Prenzlauer Berg where their butcher's shop was. They had sausage stalls all over town. "Kalkfurth Sausages", that's how everyone knew them at the time. Not that success in business did them much good. An ox kicked Adalbert Kalkfurth in the belly when he was slaughtering it, tore his guts to pieces. Heinz Winkelmann carried on the business, with Kurt the son helping him. He was going to take it over some day. Big, strong lad with a baby face. Always chasing around the district on his motorbike. Volunteered for the Motorcycle Corps and was killed at the very beginning of the war in the Polish campaign. Martha Kalkfurth had a stroke when the news came, she's been in that wheelchair ever since. Any more potato soup?'

  'Half a ladleful for everyone.' Inge Dietrich concentrated on dividing up what was left. She was thirty-six and had a few silver threads in her thick brown hair, mementoes of the countless nights she had sat in the cellar holding her sons close, listening to the deep hum of the aircraft and the sound of bombs dropping.

  Her face glowed softly in the candlelight. How beautiful she is, thought Klaus. She smiled a little, as if she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  The district councillor had finished. He rolled himself a cigarette with the tobacco that they dried green, and was thoughtful enough to go and smoke it in the garden. A lovely warm night,' he called. 'Come on out.'

  'We're going up to bed.' his daughter called back. 'Goodnight, Father. Ben, Ralf, help Grandma clear away and don't stay up too long. Coming, Klaus?'

  He picked up the dynamo lamp that was part of every household's equipment and lit the way upstairs. They undressed in silence. In spite of the slight drizzle, the night was light enough for him to see her figure - medium height, with breasts still firm and a slender waist above the feminine curves of her hips. He sat on the edge of the bed, undid his prosthesis, and put it aside together with its shoe and sock. She knelt in front of him and took him between her warm lips. Then they sank back on the bed. Their lovemaking was calm and satisfying.

  The telephone rang in the middle of the night, its sound muted because Klaus Dietrich had wedged some cardboard between the bell and the beater so that it wouldn't wake Inge. Sergeant Franke was on the line. Another murder, sir. This time right up by the fence of the Yankee zone.'

  'Where exactly?' Dietrich kept his voice low.

  'Right at the back, where the weekly market used to be. I'll wait for you there. Over.'

  He dressed quietly, but the prosthesis slipped from his hands and clattered to the floor. 'What is it, darling?' asked Inge sleepily.

  'Business.' He
fetched his bike from the veranda and cycled off. The direct way through the prohibited area was out of bounds to him, so he went the long way round, over Waltraudbriicke and through the Fischtal park. An owl hooted among the fir trees. A duck, waking early, quacked on the pond. The first hint of dawn shimmered in the east. It was infinitely quiet and peaceful.

  Franke had parked the gas-powered Opel so that its headlights illuminated a place in the fence. A Military Police jeep stood slightly to one side, and Sergeant Donovan was leaning against it with his arms folded. The inspector parked his bike and nodded to him, but Donovan ignored him. Franke pointed to the fence. At first all Dietrich could make out was a roll of barbed wire. Then he saw its ghastly contents.

  'Woman called Jutta Weber found the body,' his sergeant told him. 'Cycled to the Zehlendorf-Mitte police station to report it. I've asked her to come and see us this afternoon.'

  Klaus Dietrich looked at the pale face, surrounded by strands of blonde hair. Lifeless blue eyes stared at him through the coils of wire. 'What do we know about her?' he asked, without turning round.

  'Her name's Helga Lohmann, she's thirty-five and works for the Yanks. Her shopping bag, containing her pass and four cans of corned beef, was lying by the fence here.'

  'Clues?'

  'Maybe that rag?' Franke pointed to a piece of fabric caught in the barbed wire.

  Dietrich took it from him and held it in the light to examine it. 'Olivegreen gabardine. Could come from an American trench coat.'

  A hand reached into the beam of the headlights and removed the fabric from his grasp. 'Confiscated,' said Sergeant Donovan, adding it in German. 'Beschlagnahmt.' The word tripped off his tongue so fluently it was clear he'd used it many times before.

  'But we need it as evidence,' Dietrich protested.