St Kilda Blues

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  She was gone early and back late for the next four days. On the fifth day he caught the familiar odour of darkroom chemicals on her clothes when she came in but now somehow the smell was a good thing. She touched his cheek with her hand and kissed him softly on the lips. The slightly acrid smell of hypo fixer was in her hair, and it too reminded Berlin of better days.

  She slept late the next morning and came to breakfast on the terrace with an envelope for him. The collection of black and white prints inside the envelope showed rolling landscapes and forests, trees and rock formations, the tall stone columns standing among Roman ruins. Always above them was a dramatic, almost black sky with white clouds standing out in stark relief.

  She drank coffee and watched as he leafed through the images. The second-last one was a grave – simple, with a name and a Star of David. The last was a picture of him, one he hadn’t realised she’d taken. He was standing on the balcony, one hand grasping the overhead wooden framework that would be festooned with grapevines in spring and summer, looking out towards the horizon in the fading, last light of the day. The picture showed him in profile, deep in thought, and he knew it to be an image made with love. He looked up from the picture at Rebecca and smiled.

  She smiled back at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile in such a long time.

  ‘Seeing you standing there like that, Charlie, it reminded me of the evening you and Sarah buried Pip, under the paperbark tree in the backyard. After she went to bed crying you stood by his little grave just like that, one arm up on a branch, watching the sky.’

  Berlin looked down at the picture of the grave she had made. He put his hand on it, feeling the rough texture of the stippled paper under his fingertips.

  ‘I heard you in her bedroom afterwards. You sat on the bed holding her hand and you told her to be brave, that it would hurt a lot for a little while and a little for a long while. But then one day all she would remember would be running and jumping and rolling about in freshly cut grass with little Pip, with him chasing her, nipping at her and growling and barking until they were both too worn out to play any more.’

  For a moment Berlin could smell freshly mown grass and see the long warm twilight of a Melbourne summer evening.

  ‘I think it’s time for us to go home, Charlie.’

  Berlin nodded. ‘I think you’re right. I’d just like to make one last stop, if you don’t mind.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  The TWA flight from Tel Aviv to Athens left early on Thursday morning. The plane was another Boeing 707 and Berlin was surprised how comfortable he now was with flying. From Athens they flew to Frankfurt Airport, where there was a four-hour layover before the next flight. It was more than twenty years since he had been on German soil – or even 20 000 feet above it. It was longer still for Rebecca, who had few memories of her childhood and Stuttgart, and he hoped none as grim as his of Frankfurt.

  After Berlin had been captured they took him by train to Frankfurt, to Dulag Luft, the infamous reception centre for Allied aircrew taken prisoner in the Reich. He was photographed, his flying kit was replaced with a shabby khaki greatcoat, and then they locked him in solitary confinement. His first interrogation was a genteel affair with a Luftwaffe senior officer, who chatted amiably over cigarettes and tea and biscuits. A few days later he was dragged from his cell and dumped in a chair in front of an SS officer. A black leather overcoat was hanging on a hook by the door of the interrogation room. Berlin reckoned it belonged to the man in the black suit sitting quietly in one corner of the room, and he also reckoned the man was Gestapo.

  There were no tea and biscuits this time. The two Germans smoked constantly, but never once offered him a cigarette. However, they did threaten to drag him out to a courtyard to face a waiting firing squad, or downstairs to soundproofed cellars, promising that within twenty-four hours he would be begging for them to shoot him, just to end the pain.

  Halfway through the three-hour session Berlin realised that although there was a lot of shouting and threats of imminent execution and clips around the ears, the interrogators were not actually seeking any military information – they were simply intent on terrorising him. But he played along and eventually gave up a fake squadron number, aircraft type and target, knowing none of it could be checked and verified. They sent him back to his cell and he was feeling pleased with himself until he realised that at some stage in the first part of the interrogation he had wet his pants.

  It must be a very different Frankfurt now, though he had neither the time nor inclination to go exploring. The airport terminal was spacious and much more modern than anything he had seen in Melbourne or Sydney. The first echoing loudspeaker announcements in German startled him, as did the policemen armed with submachine guns who patrolled the terminal in pairs. He had become accustomed to the casual carrying of weapons in Israel, but that was a country at war. An armed police force was a foreign concept to him. He went looking for British or Australian papers in a newsagency and found none, but did buy himself a pocket-sized German–English dictionary.

  The Pan American Airways plane that would take them into West Berlin was waiting on the tarmac. It was a Boeing 727, the same as the Ansett-ANA jet that had flown them from Melbourne to Sydney to connect with their Qantas flight. The 727 was smaller than the 707s Berlin had become used to and had only three engines. He decided he was happy with three engines, though four would have been better.

  After his Qantas experience the casual banter between the Pan Am pilots and stewardesses was disconcerting. But through the open cockpit door he was reassured to see the crew do a pre-flight check that was thorough and professional, and their eventual take-off was smooth. It would only be a short flight and as the wheels of the 727 locked up into the fuselage Berlin wondered what he was going to find at the other end and why he had decided to make this detour. His letter inquiring about Scheiner’s wartime service had been sent to an address in West Berlin and he was still waiting for an answer. Was that the real reason for this trip? he wondered. Or was it a need he had to see a place that had figured so strongly in his war, as the seat of power of the criminal maniacs that had caused it or as the target that too often figured in his nightmares?

  The buildings of Frankfurt and the German landscape fell away quickly beneath the wings of the rapidly climbing 727. God it was fast. Berlin had always thought speed was a good thing. He had decided early on that the faster he flew, the faster a bombing mission was completed, the less chance there was of being shot down. His RAF ground crew had jokingly painted ‘Berlin Express’ on the nose of his Lancaster because of its always speedy return from operations and the theory had held true twenty-nine times – until that night over the docks at Kiel.

  Even today, twenty-two years after the war’s end, Berlin was still a divided city and not a place that could be approached by air in total safety. The flight from Frankfurt into West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport was through Soviet airspace and along a narrow and strictly defined corridor designated for civilian airline traffic. It was well reported that any aircraft that strayed outside the corridor stood a good chance of being intercepted by Russian MiG fighters and possibly even shot at by some of the more trigger-happy Eastern Bloc pilots. After reaching cruising altitude, that subject was brought up at a rather high volume by two crew-cut, business-suited men in the seats in front of Berlin and Rebecca.

  The men had obviously been drinking before boarding and the object of their conversation seemed to be to either to impress or frighten a pretty young woman seated across the aisle from them. Having actually had the experience of being shot out of the German sky, Berlin found his anger growing. The senior Pan Am hostess must have mistaken the look on his face for nervousness because she came down the aisle and leaned over the seats of the two men.

  ‘Now, Chuck, honey, you know you cain’t come on my airplane and make my passengers all nervous with your chatter about MiG fighters and all that silly nonsense. You hush and I’ll refresh those drinks fo
r y’all but you keep it up and you’ll get me all mad and you know we cain’t have that. You hear me, hon?’

  She winked and the two men laughed but they did lower the volume of their voices.

  The stewardess leaned over Berlin and Rebecca. When she spoke the syrupy southern accent was gone.

  ‘I’m sorry if they upset you, folks. They’re regular passengers and they sometimes forget we have real people on these flights too. Happens a lot with gentlemen who work for the company.’

  Berlin saw the stewardess’s eyes flicker as if she had realised she’d said something she shouldn’t.

  Rebecca smiled up at the woman. ‘The company? They work for Pan Am?’

  The stewardess seemed relieved. ‘That’s right, ma’am, they work for the Pan Am company.’

  Berlin knew West Berlin was supposed to be awash with intelligence agents and these two fresh-faced, all-American boys were obviously, very obviously, a couple of not very bright intelligence people.

  The weather changed as they got closer to their destination. Cloud cover was heavier and then there was rain and the plane was buffeted as it descended though clouds towards the airport. Berlin must have looked concerned because the stewardess stopped beside him again and smiled reassuringly.

  ‘It’s okay, just a few bumps, we should be on the ground in ten minutes. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  Berlin smiled at her. It wasn’t the clouds or the rain or the bumps. It was the memory of searchlights and flak bursts and a city ahead and below ringed in flames.

  The 727 appeared to land faster than a 707 and when the undercarriage tyres bumped and screeched on the runway and the nose wheel settled, the airport buildings visible outside Rebecca’s window were passing at incredible speed. He leaned forward against his seatbelt as the sudden reverse thrust of the engines slowed the plane. He looked down and saw that his hands were wrapped tightly around the ends of the armrests and he could feel the tension in his biceps.

  Though they had gone through German immigration formalities in Frankfurt, there were more to do at Tempelhof. The city was deep inside Soviet Bloc territory, surrounded by hostile forces and ringed by minefields and a barbed wire–festooned, high concrete wall lit up at night by searchlights. The crew-cut Yanks were ushered straight through, while Berlin was held up briefly by a security officer who was bemused by the fact that a man named Berlin was landing in a city named Berlin. He even showed Berlin’s passport to a senior officer, who just shrugged and handed it back.

  They left the airport terminal, Berlin pushing a luggage trolley, and walked out into a flurry of snow. A cab detached itself from the waiting line and pulled up next to them, the driver getting out to put their suitcase into the boot. Inside the taxi Berlin soon forgot about the cold as he looked out the windows at a city still showing obvious marks of wartime destruction. The contrast of modern office buildings interspersed with older residential premises and vacant lots was stark.

  Some of the vacant lots were piled with rubble while others were bare and neat, swept clean of any sign of what had once been there. On the faces of many of the remaining older buildings, pockmarked in the stone and brickwork, were obvious memories of the bitter back and forth street battles of April 1945 when the Germans fought to the last and the Russian Red Army fought for victory and for revenge.

  The driver glanced back at them as they waited at a traffic light and said something in German. Berlin thought he heard the word ‘Charlie’ somewhere in the middle.

  Rebecca smiled and shook her head. ‘Nein, Danke.’ and the taxi rolled forward as the lights changed.

  ‘He asked if we wanted to go and see Checkpoint Charlie on the way to the hotel. It’s the crossing point between East and West Berlin. I said no but we can if you want to.’

  Berlin shook his head and Rebecca took his hand. ‘How can you always have such warm hands, Charlie, even without a good coat in this weather?’

  The check-in at the Hilton was efficient, the clerk behind the counter spoke excellent English, and within ten minutes of arrival they were in their room. The hotel room was warm and bright and elegant with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out across the city.

  While Rebecca unpacked their suitcase, Berlin lay down on the large, comfortable bed. He heard the shower running, the sound of Rebecca moving about, felt her lips softly on his forehead and then the click of the door to the room. He willed himself to wake up, to get up, but he was held back against the bed, pressed by the weight of memories.

  He pulled the greatcoat tighter about himself, wished for a scarf and for something warm to drink and watched as the young Jewess stared at him and then Gerhardt Scheiner, his black SS uniform stark against the white landscape, pulled the trigger all over again and Berlin woke.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Rebecca’s note on the Hilton Hotel stationery said she had gone to buy film and to take some photographs. The note was sitting on top of a room service menu with the second key to the room. Berlin considered ordering some coffee but he suddenly felt the need to be outside, to walk.

  Music played in the carpeted elevator on his way down to the lobby. A map in the leather-bound folder in their room had indicated the zoo was within walking distance and the clerk at the reception desk gave him directions when he collected his passport. He scribbled a note to Rebecca and left it with the room key at the desk.

  A blast of cold air hit him as he left the hotel and he buttoned up his raincoat. He might need a heavier coat, the doorman suggested, and gave him directions to a nearby shopping street where he could buy one. Berlin found the zoo easily enough but left it within five minutes, shivering. It was partly the cold and partly the sight of the animals in confinement.

  He found the clothing store the doorman had suggested and bought a dark blue, double-breasted, woollen overcoat, a thick scarf and gloves. The shop assistant was young and pretty with passable English and she helped him with the ritual of the traveller’s cheques and smiled at his Australian passport and said she had a pen pal in Sydney and perhaps did he know her? Berlin smiled and shook his head and then surprised himself with some words in German that came back from some place hidden deep inside his brain. It was Kriegie Deutsch, POW-camp German, and some of it the girl understood and some of it mystified her. Berlin hoped none of it was cursing.

  His purchases made a big difference when he stepped back out into the street. He had no idea of their cost in Australian money but decided it was well worth whatever he had paid. The shop girl had given him the change from his American dollar traveller’s cheques in German notes, which were now in his pocket. He walked in what he thought was the direction of the hotel but by now it was dark and he realised he must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  He found himself in a square full of rugged-up people with their heads down against the cold, hurrying in different directions, and then he could smell food. At one side of the square he saw a stand where a man was grilling sausages, putting them into bread rolls for a line of waiting customers. He joined the line and when he reached the front he pointed to what appeared to be the most popular item. The storekeeper handed him the sausage-stuffed roll and Berlin handed him a note from his overcoat pocket. The stallholder shook his head and said something in German.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ Berlin’s response in English left the stallholder equally confused. He had just taken the German–English dictionary out of his pocket when a woman tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘He asks if you have smaller money, perhaps?’

  Berlin stared at her. She was his age. Had she been here during the war? Did she know Berlin had tried to kill her more than once? He took off his glove and pulled more notes from his pocket, offering them to the woman. She selected one and handed it to the stallholder. The man grunted and handed over the change in coins.

  Berlin tucked the money back in his pocket and smiled at the woman. ‘Dankeschön.’

  ‘You are English, sir, is that so?’


  Berlin shook his head. ‘Nein, Australian.’

  The woman beamed. ‘Kangaroo?’ she said and then laughed.

  ‘Ja, kangaroo.’

  ‘Enjoy our little city, please, while you stay,’ she said

  Charlie Berlin, Terrorflieger, destroyer of cities and indiscriminate killer of men, women and children, lifted his hat and dropped his head in a quick, polite bow.

  He took off both his gloves to eat, the heat from the paper-wrapped roll feeling good on his hands. The bread roll was painted with yellow mustard, the sausage was spicy and delicious and when he finished he rejoined the queue for a second helping. The sausage seller smiled at the smaller note offered this time and used his prongs to suggest a different sausage. ‘Das ist gut,’ he said. And it was good.

  A young man on a bicycle directed him to the hotel and Berlin wondered if his German was improving or if ‘Hilton’ was now part of a universal language. Rebecca was just collecting the key and his note from the front desk when he arrived. She was wearing a new overcoat too, and a cap. The Nikon was on a strap over her shoulder and there was a shopping bag beside her with an Agfa label on it. She turned around before he caught up with her and she smiled.

  ‘Whoever gave you wardrobe advice, Mr Berlin, did an excellent job. And I see you also found something to eat, going by that spot of mustard on your scarf.’

  He kissed her and told her that he loved her, not caring that they were in a busy hotel lobby.

  They had dinner in the coffee shop rather than the hotel restaurant or from room service. Rebecca ignored the German specialties on the menu and ordered a club sandwich. Berlin asked for coffee. When he saw the price of the club sandwich and Rebecca did a quick conversion from US dollars for him, he was glad that he had eaten that second sausage. When she calculated what his coat, scarf and gloves had cost he decided to order a slice of chocolate cake to go with his coffee.