City of Women (19 page)

At the Pension Unsagbar, keeping the guests from freezing has become a problem. Blankets, yes, but there’s no way to heat the space properly when the temperatures drop at night. Auntie has taken to allowing the children to sleep with their mother on her parlor floor, which has stirred the pot. The man called Kozig is grumbling.
What claim does she have to warmth that is more legitimate than mine? Because she has children? I have children too. Just not here. Should my children’s father freeze? Are her children more valuable than mine? Do they need a parent more?
There have been arguments.

One night Sigrid is leaving as Frau Weiss is listening to her children’s prayers. Their little voices reciting the large words in Hebrew.
“Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad
.
”

“Do you understand?” Frau Weiss asks her with lightness to her smile.

Sigrid shakes her head. “No.”

“It means, ‘Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord is One.’”

Herr Kozig sneers. “You think God still hears us?” he inquires leadenly, snapping each card as he lays out his game of solitaire. “You really think He’s still listening to the Jews?”

Frau Weiss looks at the new arrival, with the gray stubble of beard and the foolish postage-stamp mustache. “I’m sorry if
you
don’t
think so, Herr Kozig,” Frau Weiss replies, though she doesn’t sound sorry. She sounds defiant. “I’m sorry if you think God could desert His people.”

“
Desert
us
? How absurd.” He snaps a card from the deck. “He hasn’t deserted us. He’s served us up on a platter. While you’re teaching your children to say the Shema, He’s busy with the Nazis sharpening their knives for them, ready to carve up the next Jew for supper.”

“Herr Kozig,
please
!” The woman reproves him angrily, her hands over her daughter’s ears. “The
children
!”

“They shouldn’t know?” He shrugs. “
Say your prayers, my little kinder
,” he mocks. “
God is listening
. But what your mama won’t tell you is that he is also
laughing
.”

•   •   •

“I
DON’T LIKE HIM
.” Auntie frowns, with a sideways glance at Kozig’s never-ending game of solitaire.

“It is not for us to like or dislike him, Auntie,” Ericha reminds her. “We do not choose favorites.”

“And now I get a lecture from the pulpit,” the old woman says, smirking. “First you bring me a thief, who steals from my purse, and now
this
one, who’s thinking God knows what.”

“So shall I write up a morals questionnaire for all U-boats to complete, Auntie? Would that satisfy you?”

“Did you know he has a gun?”

“Does he?”

“A nickel-plated popgun that he sticks in his trousers to fill the void. I’ve seen him hide it.”

“Well, it makes no difference.” Ericha shakes her head. “He’ll be gone soon. We’ll move them
all
out soon. I have a possibility for passports. A man who works in the Interior Ministry.”

“And how long have you been saying that? You have
this
possibility or
that
possibility. Some bureaucrat who can stand on his head! Meanwhile, the Gestapo are trying to peer in through the keyhole.”

“I’m
working
on it, Auntie.”

“Have you heard the old man? His cough is getting worse. Sometimes I think he’s choking up the last breath of air in his body. He could be
tubercular
, for all we know.”

“I said I’m
working
on it,” Ericha repeats in a rebuffing tone as she buttons her coat. “What more would you have me tell you?”

“That you have a
solution
. That’s what I would have you tell me.”

Then, tugging on her beret, Ericha turns to Sigrid. “We should go.”

But on the way out Auntie gives Sigrid a look that isn’t hard to read.
Do something!

•   •   •

O
N THE STREETS
, the number of flags have multiplied since Goebbels’s speech demanding Total War. Patriotic marches jam the wireless and daily broadcasts, assure everyone that the men of the eastern armies are emerging from their winter camps in Russia with iron hearts, and that they will soon unleash such an onslaught that Ivan will simply collapse to his knees and pray for mercy. Oh, yes.
Pray for mercy
. But the BBC broadcasts a slightly different version. According to London, the Russians have retaken vast swaths of territory, and Army Group Center is struggling to re-form its line by withdrawing its forces from the Moscow salients. This, the announcer reminds with cool satisfaction, comes on the heels of the humiliating defeat of all German forces at Stalingrad.

When she reports this to Wolfram, he holds her in his gun sights. “Stalingrad,” he says, “was more than just the end of the Sixth Army. It was the end of any hope we might have had of laying our hands on the oil fields in the Caucasus. So there will be no spring offensive,” he announces almost casually. “Not really. Maybe by the summer. June or July. At which point, I can only imagine, we’ll throw everything we’ve got into a pincer attack to cut off the salient around Kursk. But it won’t be enough. Von Manstein managed to stabilize the southern front and kept it from collapsing because he’s a great goddamned soldier, but to breach Ivan’s line will mean committing every last piece of functioning armor we have, and draining every last drop of petrol from our reserve. And then, even if we
do,
by some miracle, manage to punch through, we won’t have the power to do much more than sit there and wait for the Reds to punch back. Our line will cave in, but this time there’ll be no way to rebuild it. No panzers. No fuel. No men,” he says flatly. “After that, the eastern armies will begin traveling the glorious road to victory in reverse.”

Sigrid looks at him starkly. They have continued to keep the springs ringing in the bed they share in the Askanischer Platz, unfaltering in their pursuit of oblivion. Though she is still a little afraid of the man. There is something of the land mine about him. And now this blunt assessment has stunned her.

“Are you saying,” she finally asks, and then must start the question again. “Are you saying that the war in the East is
lost
?”

This prompts a short laugh from Wolfram. “Lost, but far from over. We still have an ocean or two of blood to be spilled before that. Would you believe me if I told you that there are elements of the general staff already planning for the defense of the Reich’s eastern borders?” He pokes a cigarette into his mouth and picks up his silver-plated lighter. “It’s true,” he says, attempting to snap the lighter to life. “What will happen when the Red Army reaches the River Oder?”

Her face is blank, but her eyes are deep. “And what
will
happen?”

A glance up from the malfunctioning lighter. “We’ll learn the
true
definition of Total War, gnädige Frau.” No fire. “Dammit,” he breathes mildly. “Out of fuel, too.” And then he asks, “Where are you going?”

“To the WC,” she answers. Drawing a blanket from the bed. Out in the hall, she clears the hall with a glance, wraps herself more tightly, and quickly pads to the toilet a few steps away. Inside she locks the door, and sits. She simply had to get away from Wolfram for a moment. The information he is dispensing is so highly potent that she feels drunk from it. Perhaps everyone had their suspicions about the Eastern Front, but no one has ever spoken them aloud like this, not even Ericha. Yet here is this young man, casually calculating the equation of military debacle. No tanks, no petrol, no men equals the Red Army at the Oder.

When she returns to the room from the WC, she finds Wolfram closing the flap of her bag, as if he has just withdrawn his hand from it. “Looking for a match,” he explains calmly, cigarette dangling from his lips.

“I don’t carry matches,” she says.

“So I discovered. But you do carry a sharp little sister in there,” he notes, stretching over to the nightstand drawer, still in search of a light.

“I might have to gut a fish,” Sigrid answers.

“You’re coming back to bed?” he inquires, finally discovering a matchbox in the drawer, and lighting the cigarette.

“No. I have to get dressed,” she answers.

“Really? I thought you were staying. We could have dinner.”

She shakes her head, gathering her clothes. “I have to go.”

“Another man?”

“No. A mother-in-law. I must report in.”

“I’m going out of town for several days next week,” he tells her.

Efficiently slipping into her chemise. “Another woman?”

“Would that make you jealous?”

“I couldn’t help but notice that the wardrobe here is filled with a rack of women’s clothing. I assume I am not the only one you bring here.”

“And if I were to say that you
are
?” His eyes are on her as she dresses.

“I would call you a liar. So where are you going, if it’s not another woman?”

“Just reporting in to my own mother-in-law of sorts,” he replies, then turns away. “I’m sure you’ll miss me dreadfully.”

“I will,” she hears herself say.

But Wolfram seems to be done with this conversation. He is propped up against the headboard, studying his cigarette. “Take care going home. Keep an eye peeled for dangerous fish.”

“Wolfram,” she suddenly says. “What is happening to the Jews?”

He gazes at her abruptly, his gun sight returning. “That is quite a loaded question,” he says.

“We are murdering them?”

“You mean, you and I?”

“I mean
us
. Germany.”

“So you’ve been listening to the BBC,” he suggests.

“Yes, but I’m not a fool. I don’t have to listen to the BBC to see what’s happening in the streets of my own city. So I’m asking you. Is the objective,” she begins, then must swallow before speaking the word, “extermination?”

Only a beat of silence separates them.

“If you’re not an fool, Frau Schröder,” he replies, and expels a whistle of gray smoke, “and I don’t believe you
are
, then why are you asking a question to which you already know the answer?”

•   •   •

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, when she arrives at the police desk in the foyer of the patent office, she finds that her employee identification card is missing from her bag. The old guard at the desk does not make trouble for her. He simply scratches a note with a frown in a logbook. “You’ll have to go upstairs to the third floor to have it replaced,” he tells her. It’s the only full sentence she has ever heard the old man speak. But as she walks down the corridor, she thinks of Wolfram’s hand in her bag.

That evening, when she returns to her flat, Mother Schröder is talking to her from the kitchen, where she is washing a plate, and says, “So you’re missing your shadow.”

Sigrid wraps an uneaten portion of supper in wax paper. A slice of hard Schwarzbrot smeared with fish paste. That will be lunch tomorrow. “My shadow?”

“Your protégée. Fräulein Klink-a-doodle.”

The tone tells her that the old lady must have sneaked in a schnapps or two before eating. “Her name is Kohl, and she’s not my protégée in any sense of the word. It happens that we both enjoy the cinema. That’s all.”

“Well, you aren’t aware, then? She’s . . . what’s the expression? She’s
jumped ship
?” The china clinks as the old woman places the dish into the wooden drainer. Sigrid glares dumbly, prompting her mother-in-law to smile with satisfaction. “
So
. She Who Knows All didn’t know
that
, did she?”

“Know what? What in God’s name are you getting at?”

“No need to swear, daughter-in-law. I’m simply surprised that you’re in the dark. She didn’t come home to her bed last night.”

“What?” She must try to sound only mildly alarmed.

“Just what I said. Have you lost your hearing, too, or just your judgment?” The old woman wipes her chapped hands dry with a towel, glaring at Sigrid’s stupidity. “I told you that the creature was not to be trusted. But why would you ever listen to me?”

“What do you mean ‘not to be trusted’?”

“There were certain items missing.”

“Missing?”

“From Lotti Granzinger’s flat.”

“
What
items?”

“
Certain
items. None of your business what.”

Sigrid blinks. Shakes her head to try to free herself from this tangle of nonsense. “Has anyone gone searching for her?”

“
Searching
for her?” Mother Schröder snorts at the idea. “She has found somewhere else to
sleep
.
Must I spell it out for you further? She left Lotti no other choice than to report her to the Labor Service.” The old woman hangs the hand towel on its hook with finality. “We’ll see if a daily dose of close-order drill doesn’t check the little strumpet’s urges.” Then her voice gains an edgy squawk. “And
where
are
you
going at this hour?” Mother Schröder demands.

But Sigrid does not answer. She is snatching her coat and vanishing from the flat.

Forty minutes later she is rapping on Auntie’s door. But when the door opens, the look filling the old woman’s face kills Sigrid’s words before she can utter a single syllable.

“Ah. Good evening, Frau Hoff,” says Auntie in a politely formal tone. “I know you said you’d be dropping by, but I didn’t realize you’d be coming tonight.”

Sigrid stares at her dumbly.
Frau Hoff?
And then she hears it. “Who
is it
, Helene?” a male voice inquires pointedly from within.

“It’s Frau Hoff from Herr Schmidt’s office. I wasn’t expecting her till later this week.”

“Well, she’s here now,” the voice grumbles. “Have her come in.”

Sigrid blinks. It takes her an instant to reassemble herself into Frau Hoff. “No, no. I’m so sorry. I must have gotten my dates mixed up. And you have company. I’ll come back another night.”

“Helene,” the voice calls firmly. “Have her come in,” it instructs.

Auntie gives her a shrug. “Please. Come in.”

Inside, the flat is unusually warm. Or perhaps it’s only Sigrid sweating. Planted on the worn-out settee is a worn-out old man. Bald. A face like a prune. An entrenched frown. He appears shrunken inside of the serge suit he wears, and he holds a cane in his hand as if he might use it suddenly to launch himself from the sofa cushion. Pinned to his lapel is a “scary badge” above an Iron Cross from the Kaiser’s days. He glares up at Sigrid through smudged spectacles with lenses as thick as ice cubes. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t rise, Frau Hoff.” Not a polite request, more like a direct order. “But I suffered an injury in defense of our Fatherland.”