City of Women (21 page)

“Good evening,” she hears Fräulein Kessler say. The woman is dressed in a stiff beige housecoat and wearing wire-rimmed spectacles. The combination makes her look dowdy, older. “I’m sorry, are you all right?”

“All right?”

“You look,” Fräulein Kessler considers, “somewhat ill.”

Sigrid puts a hand to her forehead as if checking for a fever. “No. No, thank you, I’m not.”

“Would you like to come in? I have some brandy. Perhaps you could use a touch.”

“No. Very kind, but I’m sorry,” Sigrid answers. She sees Fräulein Kessler glance at the note still clenched in her hand. A certain wryness enters the woman’s expression.

“So have you screwed him yet?” she asks.

A flash of heat.

“My brother, that is.”

Sigrid gazes back at her with loaded eyes. All artifice seems to have abandoned her. “Yes,” she answers.

Fräulein Kessler nods to herself as she tugs off her spectacles. “He is irresistible. Even though he’s missing a leg, women cannot stop themselves from falling into his bed. A word of warning, though. Don’t make plans for the future, because you don’t have one. At least not with him.”

“Thank you. I’ll remember that,” Sigrid says thickly.

“You know, Sigrid Schröder, you are missing out on an opportunity. Wolfram may be fickle, but I am not. I can be your friend, even if not your lover.”

Only an instant’s pause before she says, “Can you?”

“Friends are really of much greater value anyway. Lovers?” She shrugs. “Who can trust them?”

At their midday break, Sigrid evades Renate’s company, and travels east along the canal toward the Municipal Gasworks, until she drops onto a bench where the dead wands of the willows etch lines in the water’s thick blue-green current. Only then does she dare examine the note again. Words scratched at an angle:
cinema
and
balcony
, followed by a time. When a body suddenly shoves onto the bench next to her, she closes the scrap of paper in her fist. A hefty specimen, dressed in a slate gray coat, lifts his black trilby. “Frau Schröder.”

Instinctively she attempts to rise, but the man’s hand clamps down on her arm. “Please, I’m not who you think,” he says, a weighty gaze beneath the bristles of his eyebrows. “I’m a friend of Fräulein Kohl’s.”

Sigrid stares back, but she settles back onto the bench and the man releases her arm. His hands are calloused, she notes. A workingman’s hands.

“You know where she is?”

“I can’t say.”

“But you know.”

“I cannot say.”

“You know that she’s still alive.”

“Yes.”

“And safe.”

“As safe as any of us can be.”

“I want to see her.”

“Not possible now.”

“Then someone should
make
it possible, because I want to
see
her.”

“I can’t stay much longer, but you should know that we think the operation has been compromised.”

“Auntie?”

“Not arrested, but they’re watching her.”

“For how
long
?”

“You should listen now, not talk. We’re making a plan to get them out. The current guests.”

“Get them
out
? How, if they’re watching?”

“I cannot say more now. We will need your help, but not now. For now you should stay away. Do you understand? You’ll be contacted again,” he says, and then he’s up, lifts his hat once more, and marches off toward the gasworks.

—

The lobby of the cinema is dim. A single, aging whore occupies a well-worn velveteen chair, staring at the smoke from her cigarette. The old usher’s cough webs his lungs. He wipes his mouth with a handkerchief and holds open the door to the mezzanine.
The rear of the balcony is empty. No patrons. Her heart is drumming in her chest as the film cranks through the projector. Up on the gray-lit screen, a newsreel camera follows a squadron of condor-winged bombers across a churning Russian sky.

Sigrid unfolds the note again, just to make sure that there are still words written there. Somehow she fears that they may have vanished from the paper, leaving it blank. But the shape of his handwriting is still visible. And then a voice.

“Don’t speak.”

As if she could.

“Sigrid, I beg you, don’t say a word.”

As if a word could possibly escape her throat. He is blotted by shadow, only a gray flicker shaping the outline of his face. His grip is desperate as he seizes her arm in his hand, and his body smells of staleness and neglect, and need.

“I have to touch you,” he whispers hoarsely. And she lets him. His touch is hunting at first, searching her for something lost. Inside her coat, under her blouse. His mouth suddenly near. Exploring her neck. Her eyes remain pried open. She is too afraid to close them, for fear that the flutter of her lids will be enough to disturb the fragile reality of the instant, that he will vanish into a memory or dream or the darkness inside her own head.

She hurries to unbutton Egon’s trousers, with a consuming need that resembles desperation more than desire. Desperate to hold some piece of the past, of her past self in her hand, to give it weight and form.

Hiking her skirt, she climbs onto Egon’s lap. He enters her, and she begins to pump herself on him. With slow, hopeful anguish, then with sudden purpose. He has started to gasp. To snort under her assault, so she clamps her hand over his mouth. Presses her head down to his, and takes an ear in her teeth as a hostage. And then it’s over, suddenly, in a spasm. And she lets her weight sag against him. Pinning him down.

—

At work, Renate tells Sigrid about her new man. He’s a soldier named Heinz, back from the Balkans on furlough. Sigrid listens to the descriptions of their bed sport, thinking of Egon’s body, the feel of him inside, with her thighs astride him. She thinks of this, but all she says to Renate is, “So what became of your man in the Potsdamerplatz?”

Renate sighs with a small frown. “Ah, that. There was a scheduling conflict. I arrived at his place one evening, and found him humping a little blond morsel from the Luftwaffeneinsatz.” She smiles again and shrugs. “I threw a fit, but really it was only for show. Things had been going downhill. We both knew it was over with. Probably it was the best way to finish it. No sentiment, just a clean cut.”

“And now Heinz.”

“You know, he’s not at all what I’m used to. He’s rather rough-hewn. No money to speak of. Just a soldier. We met on the U-Bahn, of all places, when he offered me his seat.”

“He offered you his seat, and you offered him your ass,” Sigrid says, and then looks up at the pinprick of silence.

Renate is still smiling, but she says. “That wasn’t very kind.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Well. I can have a
guess
at what’s wrong. You need a
release
.”

Sigrid feels a pause in her throat, then swallows it. “I need a place,” she whispers.

It was really too cold for a walk along the canal, but no matter. She has dragged Renate away from the patent office canteen and into the bitter air just to be able to speak this sentence to her. Renate frowns, rubbing her hands together. “A place?”

“A place to
go
to,” Sigrid says with muted urgency. “
With
someone.”

And now the light breaks over Renate’s face. “
Ahh
.” She grins archly. “Well, it’s
about time
, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“Please,” Sigrid protests.

“So who’s the lucky fellow?”

“No one.”

“No one?”

“No one you know. Just a man.”

“Well, they’re
all
just men, dumpling. But surely he has a name. Or do you just call him ‘Schnuckiputzi’?” she teases.

“Stop it. This is not a matter for jokes,” Sigrid insists, but Renate laughs anyway.

“Of course it is, Liebling. It just seems so serious, because it’s your first time in the game. But never mind. I won’t make light. I’m just so deadly curious,” she says, nudging Sigrid intimately. “It’s not that blockhead Werner, is it? God, I hope not. Believe me, he’s more crow than cock.”

“No. Not Werner. He’s not from the office,” Sigrid frowns. She stares at the slate of the walk and keeps moving. “I told you, it’s no one you know.”

“All right, all right, so it’s no one I know. At least tell me what he looks like.”

“He looks like a man.”

“
Pfft
,” Renate snorts with abrupt annoyance. “If this is how you’re going to be, you can go tell your problems to the mirror. But if you want my help, you must provide a few
details
.”

The space expands between them, and is filled by the sputter of a motor launch traveling down the canal. Then Sigrid expels a heavy breath. “He’s tall,” she says.

“Tall,” Renate repeats coolly. “Well, I suppose he would be.”

“With dark hair.”

“And eyes?”

“Brown.”

“Just brown?”

“No. Brown like caramel.”

“Brown like caramel. Now, we’re getting somewhere. A handsome face, I assume.”

“Yes. A handsome face. Broad. A bit rough.”

“And his body?”

“He has one,” Sigrid says, but finds that, against her will, she is experiencing a tingle of pleasure at this. She has never described Egon to anyone before. Never elaborated on his parts in this way. It sends a small thrill through her, which Renate must detect, because her lascivious tone returns. “I’m betting he’s muscular. No brains, perhaps, but hard muscles,” she purrs, leaning into Sigrid as they walk, throwing her off balance. “A laborer, maybe. Hard muscles, and he grunts like an ape. Like those Frenchmen fixing the rail lines.” She laughs, and then the laugh catches in her throat, and her voice drops urgently. “Oh, God. He’s
not
, is he?”

“Not?”

“A foreigner?” A problem, the authorities have found. A city full of lonely women meets an army of foreign workers conscripted into the Reich from the occupied lands, often the only males of species around who are not in short pants or walking with a cane. There have been incidents. Some of them highly publicized. The woman shipped off to a concervation camp, and the man, too, if he’s from the west, hanged or beheaded if he’s from the east.

Sigrid feels her smile die, though she still props up its corpse. “No. Not a foreigner,” and then she adds, “He was born in Neukölln.”

Renate breathes relief. “Wonderful. A good Berliner proletariat. Is he in the army?”

“Renate,”
Sigrid complains. “You ask too much.”

“All right, I ask too much. But tell me this, at least.” And now her lips brush Sigrid’s ear.
“Does he fill you up?”

Her mouth dries, and her eyes go blind to everything in front of her. All she can see is his face below her as she rode him. But words in reply to Renate’s question will not come.

“Never mind,” Renate tells her, giving her arm a squeeze. “Maybe you don’t know yet, do you, Liebchen? So don’t worry. Your big sister will fix you up.”

“Should I remind you, big sister, that I am older than you?”

“Older? Younger? It’s experience that counts here. And in that, strudel, you are a babe in arms.”

Sigrid frowns inwardly at this but does not give voice to any objection. “So,” she says instead, “I have answered your questions, and we are running out of time. Do you know of a place?”

“I think I do.” Renate says, taking her arm and hugs it as they walk. Sigrid does not resist. “I think I know of a place that might serve your purposes quite well.”

•   •   •

T
HE PLACE TURNS
out to be a dreary hotel in the Kantstrasse down the street from the Bahnhof am Zoo. Officially, it caters to out-of-town commercial peddlers. Unofficially, it caters to those who need a room with a bed for just long enough to get the sheets sweaty. So nobody pays too much attention to papers or registration beyond the minimum. The fee for the room is six marks an hour plus a ten-mark “concierge fee.” Sigrid has scrounged money from stashes at home, but to her surprise Egon removes a money clip from his pocket, and signs the guest book as Ernst Friedrichsohn and wife, Hannover.

Stupidly, it gives her a small thrill. To be signed in as his wife, even under such ersatz terms. “Identification, please, Herr Friedrichsohn,” the dingy old Berliner behind the desk requests, and Sigrid watches Egon produce a brown cardboard booklet. A Mitgliedsbuch issued by the German Labor Front. Full of contribution stamps, but no photograph necessary.

The porter gives the booklet a perfunctory glance. “Very good.” He frowns, and makes a notation before he plucks a key from a board of hooks. “Room thirty-three.”

Room 33 is cramped. The rooms here are designed to hold a narrow, lumpy bed and little else. No oversize feelings or possibilities. There’s a dry sink and a single chair close to the door, where their clothes are draped. Hers on the chair seat, his dangling over the back. Her shoes in a neat duet on the floor, her nylons balled and stuffed into the toes. His shoes, dull from the streets, the leather cracked, lying where they fell, tossed off pell-mell, still laced.

Peeled like a piece of fruit. That’s how she feels. Lying in her sweat, feeling the sting of the room’s chill on her skin, hearing the windowpanes tremble with the wind. She has so much to say to him, yet she finds she can say nothing at all. So instead she falls into an old habit with Egon. When she cannot bring herself to speak, she asks him what he’s thinking.

But Egon is simply staring at the ceiling, as if he can see through it to the sky. “I have to get better papers,” he says.

She feels a sharp pinch of distress. He is not thinking about her. About how their heartbeats synchronized as their bodies merge. He’s thinking about his damned identification papers.

“What I’ve got now might get me past a dim-witted hotel porter. But a labor pass won’t pass muster with any Sipo man with more than one eye in his head.”

She gets the feeling that Egon is talking more to himself than to her. He reaches for one of the cigarettes she’d brought for him. A few of the Bulgarians purloined from the packet she’d given Mother Schröder. She had found them again, hidden in the rear of the dish cabinet, with half of them smoked. He lights up with a wax tip and she watches the smoke rise with his gaze. He makes no comment on the quality of the tobacco. Another disappointment.