City of Women (25 page)

Sigrid feels the knot in her belly ease. “So, you moved them?”

“Temporarily. But we had to divide them up. And we lost the old man,” she says.

“Lost him?”

“There was a place in Charlottenburg, a woman whose father had died in an air raid, who agreed to take him for a few nights. I had him on the S-Bahn with me, when, just past the Knie, he made a kind of muffled noise and simply slumped against my shoulder. I knew of course that he was dead,” she says. “His heart gave out, I suppose.”

“What did you
do
?”

“What could I do? I got off at the next stop.”

“And
left him
there?”

“Old men drop dead in this town every day. Someone took care of him. Gave him a good German burial. Besides, I had other problems. The man Kozig, for instance,” she says, pressing two fingertips to her upper lip in a mock Führer mustache. “Full of demands as usual. He must have this, and we must do that. But he’s stuck in a rabbit hole for now.”

“And Frau Weiss?”

“Frau Weiss?”

“The woman and her children.”

“They’re safe,” Ericha tells her succinctly. “You call her Frau Weiss?”

“I know. Against regulations, but one night I asked. She’s Viennese.” She sees the face of Frau Weiss and her little daughters inside her head, as if they were sharing the table with them. Egon’s wife and Egon’s children. Her secret duty and secret leverage. “How safe?”

“After the last raid, six hundred people were bombed out of their homes. Something you won’t read in any of the newspapers. So I found a shop in the Berliner Strasse where typewriters are repaired, and while the clerk was in the back room, I filled out the bombing victim’s pass.”

Paying the bootblack, the man in the trilby clears his throat with gusto and dusts ash from his cigar. Ericha glances at him. “We’re running out of time.”

“Why? What’s going to happen?”

“It’s unwise to stay in one place too long. Auntie may be a warhorse, but the Gestapo torturers are experts. We must assume that her endurance and our luck will have limits. Who knows what she might tell them? What she might have
already
told them.”

“Isn’t there something we can do for her? Someone we can bribe?” Sigrid asks, but Ericha only shakes her head.

“Not at the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. We cannot afford
that
level of corruption. No. The Gestapo have her and there’s nothing for it. Maybe there’ll be time for mourning when the war’s over, if any of us are left. But for now we can only keep moving.”

“And that means?”

“There’s a Reichsbahn superintendent at Anhalter Bahnhof named Zimmermann,” Ericha says. “If I pay him enough, he can provide tickets from Berlin to Lübeck.”

“Lübeck? You think they’re not arresting Jews in Lübeck, too?”

“There is a freighter under Swedish registration that will take them to Malmö. But that costs money, too. A lot of money. So we’re scratching for it. Everything we have is invested in the ship’s passage, and we’re still coming up short. That’s one of the things I’d hope you might be able to help with.”

“Money?”

“Is there anything you can sell? Some jewelry, perhaps. Clothing? There’s a market for good clothing. Especially men’s clothing.”

“Men’s?”

“Your husband. Are there any of his shoes in your closet?”

“Ericha, you should know,” Sigrid suddenly says, “my husband’s come home.”

An uncertain stare. “Your husband.”

“Yes. He was wounded.”

“And what does this mean?”

“Mean?”

“You have a tone in your voice that makes me very anxious. Does it means that we can no longer count on you?”

“No, that is
not
what it means.”

“Is that what you came here tonight to tell me?”

“
No
. I just thought you should know.”

“You haven’t said anything, have you?
Told
him anything?”

“My God, of
course
not.”

“One wrong word, Sigrid, and we’ll all be joining Auntie in the cellar of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

“I am aware of that, Ericha. You needn’t lecture me.”

“What else?”

“What?”

“What else? There’s something else that you’re not saying.”

Sigrid pulls her scarf down from the back of her head and takes a breath. “There’s a man,” she starts.

“I
knew
it. I knew it the moment I saw you together at the door to the building.”

“No. Not him. You must button your mouth and listen to me for a change.”

Ericha’s gaze contracts, but she goes silent.

“A man who once . . .” Sigrid says, but cannot seem to untangle the rest of the sentence in her head. “We were lovers.”

Ericha gazes at her. “Were?”

“Were.
Are
.” She shrugs. “He’s a Jew. I’ve been helping him. Hiding him.”

A silence from Ericha that causes Sigrid to turn her head. She finds the girl gazing at her with a shade of gray uncertainty.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” the girl asks, perhaps a little wounded.

“
Because
I thought you’d react exactly as you
did
.”

Ericha looks away. Shakes her head. “I don’t believe that. I could have helped,” she says. “I think you wanted him all to yourself.”

“Yes,” Sigrid admits. “That’s right.”

“So. Your husband’s return must have been quite an inconvenience,” she observes blankly. “What are you planning on doing with him?”

“I don’t know. He says he needs better papers. He has a Labor Front membership book, but needs something to travel on.”

“And are you going to be traveling with him?”

Brow knitting. “Am I what?”

“You said he’s your lover. I make the assumption. Are you leaving with him? Is that your plan?”

“No.
No
, Ericha,” Sigrid whispers. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not going to abandon you. You must believe me.” But before the girl responds, a tin cup rattles its coins beside them.

“Remember the veterans’ sacrifice?” the man requests. Then, “Ordnungspolizei coming in,” he warns in an undertone.

Ericha quickly drops a coin in the cup.

“Bless you for your kindness,” the man tells her, then shoves off, tapping his cane. Behind him, two uniformed Orpo men enter the station. Franz immediately drops his head and jostles past them like any good Berliner in a hurry. It’s enough to make them stop and demand his papers.

“We must go. Right now.” Ericha stands and heads toward the doors. Sigrid must hurry to follow. She fires a cautious glance at the two Orpo patrolmen, frowning over the stout man’s identification as he impatiently chews the butt of a cigar. An ordinary man, who knows the difference between right and wrong. They make it out through the station’s bank of doors and into the night air without having to negotiate any hazards more dangerous than pushy Berliners late for their trains.

“Keep walking,” Ericha says. “No looking back.”

Sigrid fumbles to find her blackout torch and switches it on. Staring at the red beam, she asks, “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Afraid?”

“
I
am. I’m frightened all the time.”

“I have such terrible dreams,” Ericha says, nodding. “Huge machines tearing me to bits. I wake up from them, sweated to the skin, and then lie awake the rest of the night.”

Sigrid looks at the girl as they walk. “You look exhausted,” she says, but Ericha only shakes her head.

“It makes no difference.”

“I’ve
missed
you,” Sigrid tells her. “I’ve missed you quite a lot.”

Ericha gives her a glance. “Even with all those men about you? Lovers, husbands by the bushel?”

“Yes. Even so, Fräulein Kohl.”

“This is as far as we go together,” Ericha announces, dropping into her voice reserved for dispensing instructions. “When we reach the corner, I will turn left and you will keep going.”

“Where are you staying? Just tell me, please. I don’t want to lose track of you again.”

“You won’t,” Ericha assures her crisply. “Day after tomorrow at noon. I’ll meet you in the Tiergarten. There’s a bench by the Lutherbrücke. Good night, Frau Schröder,” she says. Reaching up, she pelts Sigrid with a kiss on the cheek, before veering away into the twilight of the street.

•   •   •

T
HAT NIGHT
, the Deutschlandsender broadcasts the news from the East. In memory of their fallen comrades of the Sixth Army on the Don, the heroic fighting men of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and Das Reich divisions advanced into the city of Kharkov with tanks and motorized grenadiers, and have now completely driven Bolshevik forces from their positions. The German soldiers fought indefatigably as house-to-house combat ensued. Tens of thousands of the Red Army foe have been killed. Tens of thousands more taken prisoner. When the German anthem
follows the broadcast, Kaspar stares, then takes a moment to light a cigarette.

“What will happen now?” his mother asks him.

“What will happen?”

“You are the military man, my boy. Can’t you tell me?”

“Why, complete and unequivocal victory on all fronts, Mother,” he says, without bothering to smile. “Weren’t you
listening
?” Then standing, he leaves the room and heads into the WC, leaving Mother Schröder frowning.

•   •   •

K
ASPAR SLEEPS HEAVIEST
in the morning. Sigrid has noticed this. For hours at night, he will toss about under the blankets, but around dawn, he drops off into a thick, corpselike slumber. While he snores, Sigrid climbs from bed and stares into his oaken wardrobe cabinet. He had been a fastidious dresser once, before the army. He wasn’t afraid of spending money on high-quality clothing, though he always pretended that clothes and styles were of little interest to him, and that it was only his position at the bank as an authorized signatory that demanded a certain way of dressing. But she can recall the way he would survey himself in the dressing mirror, adjusting his cuffs, inspecting the lines of his jacket, the seams of his trousers. The vanity reflected in his mirrored face.

The jackets and trousers draped neatly over their hangers are gabardine, English tweed, loden wool, pressed linen. Only a few neckties, but all are silk. His shoes are carefully polished. She brushes the dust from the toe of a pair and reveals a deep burnish that only regularly scheduled buffing can obtain. His current wardrobe, however, consists of a field gray Waffenfrock with a silvered tress on one sleeve that he calls piston rings, two pairs of army-issue breeches, three army-issue blouses, and one pair of hobnailed boots, with a finish of bootblack. A certain way of dressing dictated by the demands of his new posting as a staff clerk in a motor transport company. “A cripple’s job,” he calls it.

At breakfast, she pours him coffee, and listens to the gurgle as it goes into the china cup. “I’m sorry, it’s ersatz,” she tells him, but he only shrugs.

“As long as it’s hot,” he tells her. Then, while his mother is busy whipping batter by the sink, she says, “I’m thinking of donating some of your clothes. To the Winter Relief. Just some of the older things.”

“Fine. Take them all,” Kaspar answers without interest, glaring at the pages of a copy of
Signal
magazine. On the cover the Führer greets a Romanian officer who lost an arm fighting at Stalingrad. “None of them fit any longer,” he says.

That afternoon she feigns an illness. A stomach nausea that she describes to Fräulein Kretchmar as a thunderbolt in her bowels, a common complaint in a city fed on browning vegetables and chemical substitutes. And though Kretchmar views her skeptically, she permits her to leave work thirty minutes early. That allows her just enough time to make it back to the flat and pillage Kaspar’s wardrobe before his mother comes back from her weekly kaffeeklatsch at Oswald’s, and deposit them in Frau Kessler’s flat.

Carin Kessler has started leaving a spare key to the flat under the rubberized doormat. Sigrid inserts the key into the lock and twists it carefully, delicately. She must often battle the feeling that Frau Mundt’s predatory ears will be able to detect the tumble of the lock from the ground floor. But as the door slides open, she applies pressure on the handle, and the Portierfrau does not erupt from below in a National Socialist whirlwind. Instead, Sigrid pokes her head inside and finds Egon in a padded chair, staring at the wall.

Closing the door quietly behind herself. “I have clothes for you,” she says. “Pick out what you wish. They may be a little long, but they should do.”

Still staring at the wall. “They are your husband’s?”

“Yes,” she says.

“So now you’re dressing me up like a doll?”

Sigrid blinks angrily. “Why don’t you just
shut up
?” she asks him, which finally prompts him to look at her. “Such a typical Berliner, soaking in self-pity. Think, for a second, of all those
without
somewhere to hide. All those
without
someone to hand them clothes and bring them food.”

“All those poor kikes,” he says, “without a good Aryan to care for them. You’re right, Frau Schröder,” he concedes, his voice lacquered with acid, “I am an ingrate.”

She glares at him, hotly, but suddenly she cannot hold back the flood from her eyes. The tears overwhelm her as her legs go weak, and she drops to the carpet, unable to stand, unable to speak, unable to stop this sobbing. Then he is beside her. As his arms encircle her, she thinks for an instant that she wants to resist, but then she thinks she doesn’t, and folds herself into him. “I am an ingrate,” he whispers, but now it sounds like a confession.

•   •   •

S
HE HAS ALREADY PUT
on the water for the potatoes when Kaspar’s mother comes home, wearing her good hat and good wool dress under her coat.

Sigrid wipes the back of her hand across her cheek, as if the streak of a tear might still be visible, but her cheeks are dry now. “How was Oswald’s?” she inquires.

“Do you care?”

“No,” Sigrid answers honestly.

“Then why ask?”

“I understand that Frau Granzinger has been assigned a new duty-year girl.”

Hanging up her coat. “She has.” Tugging off her gloves and unpinning her hat. “A scrawny beanpole from the Rhineland.
Why
? Do you plan on ruining her as well?”