Berlin: A Novel

by Pierre Frei

  Hejdus was fiddling with the People's Radio. He switched it on only for the midday news, in order to save the bulky battery. Mains electricity ended in Liibbenau. No fanfares announcing special victory bulletins had been broadcast for some time now. Instead, the newsreader reported on the heroic battle for Stalingrad and Rommel's correction of the Front in North Africa, which the informed listener could decipher as the beginning of the end. Karl was sitting at the table with the girls, looking at a picture book. Wanda Hejdus was standing at the stove. Helga did not want to tear herself away from this peaceful scene. She went out, telling them she'd see whether the washing on the line was dry. Mato was waiting in the rowing boat.

  Soundlessly, they slipped along the waterway in the midday sun. It was warm for this time of year. The muted boom of an early bittern could be heard across the water. Out in the channel, they met a couple of other boats. Only a brief nod of the head was exchanged. Better to keep to yourself in these uncertain times. Just before three in the afternoon they pulled into the reeds by the park wall. Zastrow's spare key let her through the little gate. She reached the hospital unseen.

  The green Opel Blitz was waiting at the tradesmen's entrance. Gotze was leaning on the bonnet, looking bored, smoking a cigarette. Three orderlies were lounging around nearby. Children's voices were raised in song: 'Little Hans, on his own, went out in the world alone. . .'Nurse Evi appeared, with the children in a crocodile behind her. They were holding hands and singing: ong ...' The orderlies lifted them into the '... With hat and stick, he sang a song. . .' truck one by one. '... As merrily he walked along.'

  Helga thought of the hours she had spent teaching them that rhyme. Her heart constricted. She forced herself to watch and do nothing. If she intervened she would be arrested, and they would get everything out of her. Then Karl would die, and Mato, and many more, and the Sorbs would be put in a concentration camp.

  ay ...' Nurse Evi was singing along with them. 'But his mother wept all day. . .' She was about to get into the truck with her charges, but Grabbe stopped her. Gotze trod out his cigarette and slammed the two halves of the door shut. '... When little Hans had gone away.' Their childish voices were muted inside the closed truck. Gotze bolted the doors, climbed into the driver's cab and started the engine. The truck began to move. Helga saw Dr Urban's face at a first-floor window. He showed no emotion. You brute! cried a voice inside her. Child-murderer! The tears were flowing down her face.

  She went back to the boat. Mato was surprised. 'That was quick. Let's get going.'

  'We must wait until dark. I still have something to do.' She crept under the tarpaulin and fell into sleep as if in a deep faint. In her dreams she heard children's voices singing. 'Little Hans, on his own.. .'. When she woke, night had fallen.

  She pushed back the tarpaulin. 'Wait till I'm back.'

  'This is crazy,' Mato protested. 'If they catch you it's the end for all of us. Come on, see sense and let's be off.'

  She had no intention of doing such a thing, but she put her arm around him. 'Be a dear boy,' she breathed in his ear. 'It will be lovely again once we're home.'

  Sleet drove into her face as she struggled through the undergrowth to the coach-house. She put on the light. You couldn't see the coach house from the hospital. The green Opel Blitz was standing in its place, with her bicycle propped nearby. She picked up the telephone and dialled Urban's extension. He answered in forbidding tones. 'Yes, what is it?'

  She slipped into the role she hated. 'You know who this is.'

  He was surprised. 'Nurse Helga?'

  'I want to see you. In the coach house.'

  'The coach house?'

  'Do you have to repeat everything I say? Come at once. And bring the whip with you.'

  'The whip. Oh yes.' His voice sounded both submissive and eager.

  She unbuttoned her loden coat until her skirt and boots were in view. When he arrived she was standing at the back of the coach house, beside the truck. 'The whip,' she demanded coldly. He gave it to her with a look of doglike devotion. She pointed to the bicycle with the whip handle. 'Get that on board and then get in yourself.' He obeyed. 'Now, take your clothes off.' Visibly excited, he did so. 'Down on all fours, facing forward,' she ordered. His buttocks were large and flat, and his penis, red and ugly, dangled between his thighs. She slapped her boot with the whip, making him jump. Then she closed the doors and shot the bolts. The ignition key was hanging from its nail by the telephone as usual.

  The gears were similar to those in her Brennabor. She pulled the starter button. After turning over and failing a few times, the engine caught. She put the truck into first gear. stepped on the gas slightly, and engaged the clutch. The truck jerked forward. There was a grinding sound as she changed up into second gear. It was a long time since she had last driven. Just enough light came through the narrow slit left in the headlights, partly obscured to comply with blackout regulations, for her to find the way to the gate. She stopped and hooted impatiently.

  Zastrow came out of the porter's lodge looking sleepy, Jule on her leash with him. He opened the gate without looking into the truck. 'Pack of criminals,' he muttered.

  She had memorized the map. A driveway led from the gate to the road. You turned right for Liibbenau. The sleet had stopped, but she still drove slowly. Her face was set like stone. She knew that with every revolution of the engine it was pumping deadly gas into the load area. Urban would be coughing, retching, finally breathing stertorously. Convulsions would shake him until he perished miserably, racked by convulsive twitching. The thought filled her with satisfaction.

  It took her over half an hour to go the ten kilometres. She wanted to make quite sure. She stopped in the square outside the town hall, empty at this time of night, turned off the engine and jumped out of the driver's cab. She pushed back the bolts. Urban's naked body fell towards her. In his death agony he had been clawing at the doors. His torso hung out of the truck. She took her bicycle out and placed the message she had prepared in advance beside the body:

  THIS IS HOW THEY DEAL WITH 'WORTHLESS LIVES' IN KLEIN MOORBACH. SO FAR 18 CHILDREN AND 34 ADULTS HAVE PERISHED.

  It took her fifteen minutes to cycle back. When she reached the park wall she put the bicycle over her shoulders and made her way to the small gate by the light of her torch. She opened the gate and pushed the bicycle through it. In the coach house she propped it against the wall.

  All finished?' asked Mato when she joined him in the boat.

  All finished.' Exhausted, she crawled underneath the tarpaulin.

  A Gestapo special unit came from Berlin. Their investigations led nowhere. Helga had cut the letters for her message out of the Spreewaldboten newspaper and stuck them together. She had taken the sheet of paper from a new school exercise book belonging to the Hejdus girls, the sort you could buy anywhere, and she burned the rest of the exercise book. She had been wearing gloves throughout her nocturnal operations. Moreover, she had been officially missing for weeks, so no one connected her with Urban's death.

  'People are furious,' reported Hejdus. He had been in the town. 'They smashed up the gas truck. No one knows who was driving it.' He looked hard at Helga. 'Well, we don't know anything either.'

  Special units of the police and the SS combed the entire forest area on foot and in motorboats over the next few days, but the water prevented their dogs from picking up a trail. Helga, Karl, Mato and two other men who had not joined up spent many hours in the hiding place under the house. Finally the search troops were withdrawn. The Spreewald had given away none of those it protected.

  Nor did it give them away in the months to come. While squadrons of Allied bombers flew over them in the direction of Berlin, the people on the Kaupe continued their simple way of life. A beautiful spring made up for the last winter of the war. March was warm and sunny, and April as hot as summer. Helga, Mato and Karl had to go down under the house less and less often. The rulers of the Greater German Reich, not so great now, had worse problems than the So
rbs.

  Helga and Mato had climbed up to the raised hide at the mouth of the channel, not to keep watch but for one of their secret meetings. Mato was sitting on the narrow bench, leaning back. Helga was astride him, riding them both to a satisfying climax. They made love when the opportunity offered, Mato with a young man's amazed ardour, Helga enjoying herself very much. She was thirty-five, and these physical encounters did her good. The inhabitants of the Kaupe knew about the relationship and tacitly approved.

  The others were all sitting in the sun when the two of them came back. A biplane with the red star on its wings flew overhead, purring like a sewing machine. The girls waved up at it. The pilot waved back. 'Well, it'll soon be over now,' said Zastrow. He had given up his porter's job. 'Remains to be seen if the new masters are any better than the old,' he added sceptically.

  The new masters arrived on a Sunday. Helga was swimming. She loved those moments in the cool water when she felt weightless and free. In spite of the thunder of the guns, which was getting closer and closer, the war had remained improbable, something which didn't seem to affect her. Now, all at once, it became reality. A shallow, motorized pontoon glided along the waterway and made fast. Six young Red Army soldiers jumped on land, sub-machine guns drawn and ready. One of them had a pockmarked, Mongol face. With a couple of strokes, Helga reached the bank. The soldiers stared at her. They had never seen a woman in a bathing suit before.

  One of them shouted and fired a salvo into the blue sky. The others roared something. Two of them seized Helga. She defended herself in silence, but she knew she had no chance.

  'Mama, Mama!' Karl came racing up. He was a strong lad of nearly fifteen now, and fearless in his simple innocence. He made for the intruders like a madman, thrust them aside and stationed himself protectively in front of his mother.

  'Karl, don't, they'll shoot!' she begged. Her son stood rooted to the spot. One of the six called something out in surprise. He took the pockmarked soldier's arm and pulled him over to Karl. They could all see that the man of Mongolian origin and the mongoloid boy looked like brothers. The men stared in amazement. The soldier hugged Karl and slapped him on the back. The others laughed and applauded. Helga ran into the house, and no one stopped her.

  Hejdus had placed himself by the stove with his four women behind him. He was holding a shotgun. 'We'll kill ourselves first,' he growled.

  Quickly, Helga flung some clothes on. 'What about your famous Spreewald hospitality?' she cried, running out again. The soldiers were talking to Karl and laughing. Karl took Helga's arm. 'Mama,' he told his new friends. 'My Mama.'

  One of them understood. 'Matka.' He pointed to first mother, then son. 'Sin.'

  Frau Wanda and the three girls had put on their traditional caps and shawls and carried out trays with water, bread and salt on them. They bobbed curtseys, not submissively but with a welcoming smile. The soldiers understood this gesture of hospitality, and took what was offered with thanks. The two Zastrows came hesitantly out of their cottage. After hiding his shotgun, Hejdus joined them.

  Then there was real eating and drinking: sausage made with grits, pancakes, millet and cabbage, with sour milk to drink. They all laughed and talked. The Sorbs and Russians were delighted to find words common to both their Slav languages.

  Papa Zastrow ventured to put it into words. 'Friends, I think the war is over.'

  Helga had never seen her son so happy before. He raced around in high excitement, filling the guests' plates and mugs. Later they danced to Mato's accordion. Karl stumbled awkwardly around with Breda. He couldn't get enough of the fun. Then, in the middle of the dance, he collapsed. Helga was beside him at once. He lay on the ground, breathing heavily, his eyes closed, his pulse barely perceptible.

  The men carried him into the house. Helga undressed him, rubbed him with juniper spirit, and covered him up to keep warm. She sat beside the bed and held his hands. She knew this was the end. His heart, underdeveloped as in all mongoloid children, had held out for almost fifteen years. He opened his eyes. 'Mama,' he said thickly.

  You are dying free, my son,' she whispered. 'That's my gift to you.'

  Outside, the soldiers started the engine of their pontoon and cast off. The noise of the engine died away. All was quiet in the bedroom. Karl had stopped breathing.

  They buried Karl behind the house. The girls wept, but Helga had no tears to shed. The knowledge that she had carried out her task consoled her. She had looked after him and protected him from his first moment of life to his last, had fought for him and defended him, had given him good, happy times. Now that it was all over she couldn't stay in the Spreewald. She returned from Cottbus to Berlin on the roof of a freight train.

  The building in Sophie-Charlotte-Strasse was intact, but it was brimming over with people who had been bombed out. Helga kept applying to the Housing Department until they finally let her have a room in her own house. Until then she stayed with her sister in Tempelhof. Monika's small daughter Erika was five. She last saw her father in '42 and can't remember him. They say it will be years before the Russians let their prisoners of war go. Young Frau Pillau next door isn't waiting that long. She takes a student to bed from time to time. It must be fun with a really young man, don't you think?'

  Helga told her about her times with Mato. A dear boy. He insists he's coming to visit me here, but I hope some Spreewald girl will put a stop to that. I really don't like the idea. I have to put my life in order and look for work.'

  'Why don't you go back to your old job? Children's nurses are always in demand,' Monika encouraged her.

  One day soon after that Helga went to the Charite, which was now in the Soviet-occupied sector. The Western Allies had moved into Berlin a few days earlier and taken over their own sectors of the capital. There were no visible lines of demarcation between West and East, only several large and ugly notices on the major thoroughfares: YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE BRITISH - FRENCH - AMERICAN - SECTOR OF BERLIN. The Berliners weren't bothered. They went all over their city or out of it, on foraging expeditions or to search for friends and relations who had been bombed out.

  'You'd like to come back to us? Good. Just go to the personnel department,' a friendly woman at reception told her.

  'Rinke, Helga?' The same man was at the registration desk, except that now he'd removed his Party badge. He brought out a card index. 'Nurse in the children's ward until 1929. Reappointed 1941.' He stopped. 'Just a moment, please.' He disappeared into the room next door. She heard him pick up the phone. '. . . had herself transferred to Klein Moorbach, that euthanasia institute ... my duty as an anti-Fascist. . .'She couldn't hear any more. She didn't need to. Quietly, she left the office. She had to get out of there! The Western newspapers had reported this kind of thing. The NKVD were looking for alleged Nazi criminals all over the Soviet-occupied zone, throwing them into the camps they had taken over from the real wrongdoers.

  'They don't go to the trouble of examining the facts.' she explained to her sister. 'Well, luckily they know me as Helga Rinke and not Helga Lohmann. All the same, no one's getting me back in the East again.'

  'Go to the newspapers and tell your story,' Monika suggested.

  But Helga wouldn't hear of it. 'That won't bring the children of Klein Moorbach back to life.'

  'What are you going to do?'

  'Look around here for something.'

  Young Frau Pillau next door came to her aid. 'Try the Yanks, Frau Lohmann. They're recruiting Germans to work in all sorts of jobs. Schoolgirl English is good enough. My sister-in-law got a job in the Telefunken canteen, the US intelligence people have set up shop there. I'll ask Marina where you apply tomorrow.'

  The place to apply, Helga learned, was the German-American Employment Office in Lichterfelde. She got the address, too. It was in Finckensteinallee. Ask for Mr Chalford.'

  Mr Chalford was the man in charge of the office. 'How good is your English. Fraulein Loman?'

  'Frau Lohmann. My husband fell in the war.' That was close enou
gh to the truth. Death by exploding gun barrel in Doberitz sounded a little banal.

  'Can you please say that in English, Frau Loman?'

  'My man is dead in the war.' She spoke rather broken English, but it was good enough for Mr Chalford.

  'Have you got a profession?' he asked, still in English.

  She was surprised to find how well she could understand him. 'I am a sister for children.'

  'You mean a children's nurse? Excellent. And do you also know anything about housekeeping? Can you cook?'

  I think so.'

  'I believe I have something for you. Colonel Tucker and his family are looking for a housekeeper.' Chalford played with a pencil as he talked. He spoke halting German, with a heavy American accent. 'Mrs Tucker needs help, particularly to take care of her two boys. Their house is in Dahlem. Im Doi - funny kind of street name, don't you think? If Colonel and Mrs Tucker like you, you can have the job.' Helga looked at him with interest. She had never been so close to an American before. Chalford was a friendly man in his thirties with thinning fair hair, a round, rosy face, and pale-blue eyes. He seemed to be a pleasant human being. As a man he left her cold. 'You must have a medical first, of course,' he explained. 'We only want healthy people. And then we'll take a photo for our card index of employees. Where do you live?' Helga gave him her address in Sophie-Charlotte-Strasse. Chalford put the pencil down. 'Good luck, Frau Loman.' He winked encouragingly at her and began to read a file.

  The T-Line bus wasn't back in service because of the fuel shortage. The Americans had started a bus line of their own, carrying GIs, US civilians, German employees of the army who held bus passes, and several clever Berlin lads who managed to persuade the naive German drivers that they were Americans by chewing gum and wearing garish ties.