The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02]

by David L. Robbins

  Most of the Russians don’t appear to have been in a city before. They can’t ride bicycles, trying and falling, jiggling the handlebars back and forth in awful balance. They complain when they get up, scraping knees like little boys. Many Reds stand with hands on hips looking at the ruins, as though the buildings are still intact and they’re just tourists marveling at Berlin’s architecture. One soldier stops them, rolling back his coat sleeve to display an arm mailed in watches. His whole arm ticks. He points at Mutti and Lottie, who do not have watches. The soldier shrugs, almost friendly, and waves them on. The two women are out of breath. They walk part of the way to Goethe Strasse, past soldiers defecating in alleys, shepherds of smelly goats and pigs, weapon-laden dirty men with women’s shawls lapping their shoulders. When Mutti can, she drags Lottie again into a run.

  The Soviets have been heavy-handed in their battle for Charlottenburg. On some blocks the destruction is as bad as the aftermaths of the Amis’ air raids, though the Russian demolition is of a different brand. Where the Allies’ bombs crushed entire structures to dust and rubble, the Reds have clawed into Charlottenburg. Buildings bear gaping holes hollowed by artillery, smaller bite marks range from several meters to the tinier mauls of bullets and shrapnel. For the first time the dead in Berlin’s streets are not civilians or foreign workers but soldiers. Freya and Lottie hurry past and notice the bodies are only German; the Reds have claimed theirs and left the defenders where they fell. The corpses are of every age, smooth boys and young soldiers and the elder Volkssturm, all men who thought they could make a difference, and have, for they are dead.

  There is no single appearance to the Soviets. They are swarthy men, blond and fair, red-haired and freckled, olive-skinned, bearded and shaggy, or trimmed and neat. Their eyes are round or slanted or almond-shaped. Their uniforms are green, gray, brown, they wear dozens of hats and colorful caps and helmets. After years of Nazi tirades about the horrible Russians, these men simply look like foreign soldiers—ethnic, deadly, even a bit barbaric and out-of-date.

  Lottie knows she must fear the invaders. She sees what their guns have done. German bodies in the road display the Russian resolve and cruelty. But Lottie in her heart has left Berlin, and the fear she senses of the Russians is the same she would feel if she were sitting safe in another land reading about Berlin. She worries for her city and her Mutti but not for herself. The Reds cannot touch her because she has protected herself, she is gone.

  Freya leads Lottie back to Goethe Strasse. Reaching their block, Freya halts, bringing a flat hand to her breast at the sight of her spared house. There are marks of battle everywhere. The Russians’ indiscriminate shelling has left smoke rising from many buildings. Freya’s home is in the center of a row of attached stone faces that has withstood the assault. She tows Lottie to her steps. Soviet soldiers are on the street, walking with guns and heads lifted, searching rooftops and high windows for snipers. Apparently the fight for this block has ended just minutes before. Brass casings litter Freya’s steps. An upstairs window has been blasted out. One bullet hole is in the door.

  “Ach,” Mutti sighs, ”dear God.” She turns to Lottie. “We’re home. I was so worried.”

  Lottie is curious, not angry at the suggestion. She asks, “About Julius?”

  Mutti cocks her head. Her smile is slow, reluctant. It is honest.

  “Yes, Liebchen.”

  Still hand-in-hand they walk into the house.

  In the parlor Mutti lets Lottie go.

  “Wait here.”

  Freya walks down the long hall to the yellow door. Lottie cannot hear what her mother says to the Jew. But her mother speaks, then listens, so he is still there.

  Freya returns to the front room carrying a straight-backed kitchen chair. In her other hand is a towel and a pair of scissors. Tucked under her arm is a broom.

  She sets the chair in the middle of the room.

  “Sit down.”

  Lottie takes the seat. The towel is wrapped around her shoulders.

  Mutti stands in front of Lottie. The two say nothing, though Mutti’s eyes express, I’m sorry, I have to do this. Lottie does not let her own face convey anything.

  Freya walks behind Lottie. The scissors snip. A lock flutters to Lottie’s lap. She brushes it away with the back of her hand.

  With every rasp of the shears another soft cascade tumbles off Lottie’s shoulders. Her blond curls pile on the parlor rug. Gazing down at them, she refuses the tug of metaphor. Spilled gold. Lost innocence. The hair falls with no sound or impact, it is not a momentous thing. It’s just hair, she thinks. Why make up images, why see or feel more than you have to?

  Freya is glum at her work, chopping her daughter’s hair back to a boy’s crew cut. At first there is no talk between them, just the slice of the scissors. Mutti clucks her tongue when she exposes the scab on the back of Lottie’s head from the iron gates of the Zoo.

  Halfway through the cut, Lottie notes the pace of the shears speed up. Mutti seems to clip with agitation, flinging bits of her daughter’s hair to the floor.

  Mutti says, “Lottie, when we’re finished, I want you to go upstairs and put on some old work clothes. There’s a pair of baggy pants and some sweaters in your dresser. I have a pair of boots for you too. You’ll put them on and keep them on.”

  Lottie makes no answer.

  Snip.

  Freya continues.

  “I’m going to burn a cork. We can smear it on your face and hands.”

  Snip.

  “Then we’ll hide the silver and the good picture frames. And my rings. There’s a little food left, we’ll put that away somewhere.”

  Lottie feels the weight falling from her head.

  She says, “It doesn’t matter.”

  Next to her ear the scissors make an angry cut.

  Mutti’s tone is taut. “Don’t fight me on this, Lottie. Do as I say.”

  Lottie repeats, “It doesn’t matter.”

  One more snip, and Freya stomps her foot. She marches in front, shaking the scissors in Lottie’s face.

  “You have got to snap out of this! Right now! You’ve got to stop being so selfish. I can’t fight you every step of the way. I can’t bear any more.”

  Lottie focuses on the point of the scissors. Freya lowers them. She stops herself from saying more and moves behind her daughter to finish the haircut.

  The shears snip for several minutes.

  Mutti speaks again, this time in a restrained voice, not to kindle an argument.

  “I want you to hide. I want you to go upstairs and find a place.”

  “No.”

  Freya continues as though she did not hear.

  “Go down in the basement with Julius. I’ll keep them from looking for you.

  Lottie hawks up a laugh.

  “How do you expect to do that?”

  Mutti does not answer.

  Lottie shakes her head. This stops Freya from cutting.

  Lottie says, ”No, it doesn’t matter. Hide everything in the house. They’ll find what they want anyway. They’ll look, they’ll tear the house apart until they do.”

  Mutti strides again in front of Lottie.

  Lottie runs fingers through her butchered hair. She makes her voice gentle for her fraying mother.

  “They’ll find me.”

  Freya takes a step forward. Her hands rise to cup Lottie’s chin, the scissors come close to her face. Her mother draws a breath, it becomes a shudder. Freya shakes her head in solemn motion.

  “I know, Liebchen. I know.”

  Mutti rubs a palm over Lottie’s shorn head. There’s little left on her scalp but bristles.

  “Ach, your hair.”

  “It’ll grow back.”

  “I’m finished,” Mutti says. “I can only make it worse.”

  Mutti takes her daughter’s hand. The two look at each other in silence. Though they’re alone, the parlor feels crowded by the Jew, the Russians, the war, the future.

  Freya grows tea
ry.

  “I’ll cut mine too,” she says. “That’ll make it up to you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Freya takes the towel from around Lottie’s shoulders. She shakes it out on the floor.

  “I’ll sweep up.”

  “Mutti?”

  “Yes, Liebchen?”

  “How will you keep them away from the basement?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m an old woman.”

  Freya grabs the broom and begins to clean the carpet. Lottie asks again, “How?”

  Freya stops. She faces her daughter.

  Lottie changes her mind. She rattles her head and looks down to her lap.

  “No, Mutti. Don’t tell me. It doesn’t matter.”

  Freya clings to the broom.

  “Stop saying that. It does. Now more than ever, when it seems like everything hurts. This is when we matter most.”

  Freya leans the broom against the parlor sofa. She stands erect, preparing herself. She smooths her hands down her dress.

  “The food I’ve been bringing home the last few months. Since Julius moved into the basement. You know the ration cards were never enough.”

  “I know.”

  “I will never let the two of you starve.”

  Lottie looks on.

  Freya works her hands. “The black market. I traded on it.”

  “I know.”

  “Child, I traded sex.”

  Lottie shows no reaction. Even she is surprised at her own stillness. This declaration should have jolted her backward. Her mother is a secret whore. For months men have paid her in packets and tins. She’s saved a Jew, she’s fed her daughter, and become a slut. Lottie waits, poised, waiting to hate her mother.

  Lottie looks back over the past months and thinks she might have guessed this. She might have wondered at things and asked. She could have seen clues. Could have been concerned. But she wasn’t.

  Lottie sits in the kitchen chair. Mutti stands before her, awaiting judgment. Lottie says nothing, no verdict. She feels scoured. There is no reproach in her for Mutti. There’s not even indignity for Papa’s memory. She sits under this bombshell from her mother the way she sat beneath the Russian shells. Lottie is resigned, curled up into a ball like a man taking a beating, she feels each blow a little less than the one before it.

  Lottie gazes up at her mother. Without emotion, she thinks: This is an extraordinary time, and Mutti has clearly become extraordinary with the war. Lottie has stayed behind. Now that music has been taken from her, and the cello stays locked in its case, she’s been exposed: not exceptional at all. Mutti has sacrificed and dared without boundary to help her daughter and a stranger survive. Lottie, for all her brilliance, must be such a disappointment.

  Lottie rises, spilling more hair onto the floor. She brushes clinging curls from her skirt. She lifts the chair and takes the scissors from Mutti’s pocket. They’ve barbered Lottie’s hair in the front room so Julius wouldn’t hear them. She knows this without being told.

  Carrying the chair and scissors back to the kitchen, Lottie walks past the yellow door. A thousand times she’s done this and the silent door has reached to her every chance. The life of the man behind it always trips her with its complexity. The discipline of the Jew. His peril. His woe.

  Not today.

  Today Lottie’s sacrifice is greater than the Jew’s. The woman who debased herself for them was his protector. But she is Lottie’s mother.

  She sets the things in the kitchen and strides past the basement door with a new sensation. At last, Lottie’s life and her own danger are equal to what sits in the dark on the top step. He is a Jew in Berlin, yes, and that has been a terrible thing. But Lottie is a young woman in Berlin. The Russians are here now. They will not come looking for Jews.

  She speaks to the door.

  “Julius.”

  He is there.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that Mutti was selling herself to feed you? You and me?”

  “Selling herself?”

  “Yes. Sex. For black-market food.”

  The door pauses.

  “No.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Lottie steps away.

  “Did you?”

  She stops.

  “No. She just told me.”

  “What would you have done? If you’d known?”

  Lottie doesn’t have to answer. She has the right not to answer. But he doesn’t.

  She asks, “What would you have done?”

  “I would have stopped her.”

  Lottie smirks. “How?”

  “I would have left.”

  Yes, he would have. Because that’s who this Jew is.

  “Lottie, she’s your mother. What would you have done?”

  She gazes at the broad yellow panel of the door. Come out, she thinks, and I’ll slap you. I’ll choke you, I’ll throw you down the stairs.

  But the answer inside her is not like the Jew, it lacks his discipline to stay in the darkness any longer. It does come out.

  Nothing. She would have done nothing.

  She sees in her mind her mother beneath a Nazi. Lottie sits beside the bed eating a biscuit with only her cello between her legs.

  Lottie’s knees weaken. She stumbles against the wall.

  “Lottie? Lottie, are you all right?”

  The Jew would emerge from the basement if he thought she was in trouble. He would try to protect her, at his own risk.

  Like Mutti. She has done everything to safeguard her daughter. So much, that by her own words she can’t do any more.

  Lottie has done nothing.

  Nothing but wish for protection. Nothing but whisk herself away in her heart, contemplate suicide, fantasize, and complain. She hasn’t lifted a finger to deserve protection. And that’s why now she does not have it. The Jew can’t help her, no matter how brave or selfless a man. Mutti will be defenseless when the Russians come. But they try. They suffer for each other, for her, and they try.

  The reality is obvious, a simple calculation, another blow. There is no protection for Lottie. She has never been worth protecting.

  Not like Julius.

  And Mutti.

  Lottie is nothing.

  She rights herself against the wall. She steadies her voice.

  “Julius.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to know. I would have done nothing.”

  She expects the yellow door to grow narrow, like a disapproving eye. But the voice behind it says, “Yes, you would have. Of course you would.”

  Lottie walks away, into the parlor. She’s relieved that the Jew is wrong. She feels better knowing this, that he fools himself like anyone else.

  Freya is on her knees gathering the last of Lottie’s hair. Stacked on the sofa are a pair of pants and three sweaters. Beside the table stands a pair of battered boots.

  “Mutti, sit down with me.”

  Freya moves to the sofa. Lottie joins her and sees her mother has been crying. Mutti lifts one hand to her mouth but cannot stifle herself. Lottie has nothing to hand her to sop the tears. She reaches for one of the wool sweaters and lays it over Mutti’s lap.

  Lottie puts a gentle hand to her mother’s back.

  “Mutti?”

  Freya turns with red eyes.

  “Mutti, does Julius still have the yellow star?”

  Freya shakes her head. “I sold it for food. Like he asked.”

  Lottie imparts a smile. “Did you get him his holiday potatoes and parsley?”

  “Yes. And more for all of us. I did.”

  Mutti says this to convince her daughter that some of the food they have eaten was purchased with money. Lottie eases her mother’s shame with another stroke down her back.

  There is a small cache of candles and matches in the table beside the sofa. Lottie slides over to fetch a taper. She strikes a match, the burning wick lights the parlor. Night has crested in Berlin.

  Freya calms slo
wly. Lottie watches the shifting shadows in the parlor.