City of Women (30 page)

Laid out on the length of velvet, the diamonds become stars in the lamplight. She watches Melnikov handle them with deftness and concentration.

“You are an expert,” she observes.

The Russian agrees. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time,” he muses, examining one of the stones with an eye ring. “After the Bolsheviks, there were droves of Russians in Berlin, all trying to unload their ancestral trinkets. Grand dukes waiting tables at the Romanisches Café, pawning the jewels they had smuggled in, sewn into their wives’ undergarments. It was quite a time to make money,” he reminisces fondly, then nods appreciatively at the diamond he is inspecting. “Excellent. Excellent color, excellent clarity. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen so many top-quality stones. These days, most of what I’m brought is trash. But our friend still has his eye. These will do very nicely. Did he say how much?”

“How much?”

“How much is he asking?”

“He said that you would offer a fair price.”

The old Russian snorts. “Then, I suppose I must,” he says. “You know, I knew him, before the war, our friend Grizmek. By a different name back then, though,” he says, and winks. “I did business with his father and older brother. They were both good men. You know,
honest
. More honest than me,” he concedes. “But the young one?” he says. “Like a razor. If you weren’t careful?
Slash
, right through to the bone. And then he’d leave you bleeding, but do so with a most disarming smile.”

“Yes,” Sigrid admits. “I’m familiar with the process.”

Melnikov shrugs his understanding. “He has always relied upon his women,” he tells her, but then says nothing more about it. Instead he grunts as he bends over to a heavy black safe, which looks as if it has been through more than one war. “You’ll excuse me,” he says, “if I must ask you to turn your back.”

She does, staring at the icons on the mantel, gilded but dust-laden, and listening to the trip of the tumblers and the heavy thunk of the safe’s iron door.

“This is what I am prepared to offer,” the man tells her, and proffers a kraft paper envelope. She takes it. Inside is a stack of Reichsmarks. She glances at him. What is the protocol? Should she count it? But Melnikov can read her mind, it seems. “Go ahead. Count it. It’s no insult.”

So she does. Then gazes back at the old man’s face with some small anxiety. She has never held this much money in her hands before.

“I am not by nature a generous man,” he explains with a shrug. “But there are times when one does what one can do. Tell him it’s in honor of his father, God preserve his soul.”

“Thank you,” Sigrid whispers. Then buries the envelope in her bag. “Thank you, Herr Melnikov.”

Sigrid turns, but at the door Melnikov adds a parting thought. “And tell him, please. Tell him I offer my condolences.”

“Condolences?”

“Forgive my poor taste for asking you to play as messenger in this case, but please tell him that I was very grieved to hear of his wife.”

The words turn Sigrid into cement. She cannot move from the doorway. “His wife,” she repeats.

“Yes. I knew her when she was a girl in St. Petersburg. I was partners, briefly, with her uncle in export business.”

“St. Petersburg.” Sigrid shakes her head. “But that’s not possible,” she explains.

A blink. “Pardon? What is not possible?”

“His wife is very much alive. And she’s not from St. Petersburg, she’s from Vienna.”

“No,” Melnikov corrects in a patient tone. “Vienna is where they
met
. Perhaps,” he suggests, “perhaps you’ve misunderstood.”

“No. No, Herr Melnikov. I haven’t misunderstood. And I saw his wife only days ago. You’re offering
condolences
, but she is very much
alive
.”

And now Melnikov’s face is starting to darken with caution. He gives the corridor another glance, then clears his throat so that his tone is level and blunt.
“Meine Frau,”
he begins thickly, formally. “Your relationship with Grizmek is your business. I don’t know what he has said to you, or what you believe. But I can assure you, I am not so old or so senile that I cannot recall the facts of my own life. I can
also
assure you that what I’m telling you is true. A terrible thing, but
true
. His wife was killed last month on the day she and her daughters were to be transported to Poland.”

Sigrid searches the sagging face for some fissure in its certainty, just a small enough crack for her to slip through. But his face is a wall. Finally, she forms the question. “How do you know this?”

Melnikov frowns. “I dislike dealing with the SS, but times being what they are, I have more than one business associate at a certain address in the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. I was aware of Grizmek there. I was aware, too, that they valued his services. Also, perhaps, they were a little frightened of him. I know this sounds absurd, the SS frightened of a Jew? But that was my sense of it. They were very concerned that he never discover the truth about his wife. Especially that
durák
Dirkweiler.”

“Who is Dirkweiler?”

“Untersturmführer Dirkweiler. He’s a handler.”

“A
handler
? What does that
mean
?” she asks, then presses him when he shakes his head. “Tell me, please. What does that mean?”

“It means what it means.”

“What about the Grosse Hamburger Strasse? He was a
prisoner
there. What do you mean, they
valued
him? The Gestapo gave him beatings.”

“No doubt. In the beginning.”

“The beginning? What are you saying,
the beginning
?”

The Russian frowns. “You’re telling me you don’t know? Quite seriously?”

“Know
what
?”

Suddenly he shakes his head. More worried. “I have said enough. A little brandy,” he tells her, “and a pretty woman has loosened my tongue. That’s all.” He’s trying to crowd her out, but she becomes immovable.

“
No
, Herr Melnikov, I will not allow you to simply shoo me on my way.”

“My dear, you have your money, more than I should have paid. What more do you
want
from an old man?”

“I will not leave until you
answer
me.”

“Answer you? But I
have
answered you.” The door across the hall cracks open. No eye is visible, no listening ear. But it is enough to deepen the frown on the old man’s face.

“Shall I scream? I will,” Sigrid whispers, her voice gone raw. “I’ll scream my head off.”

His eyes loom. “You want the police here?”

“Do
you
? I’m sure that I am not the first ‘pretty woman’ who’s come to do
business
at this door. I’m sure they would wonder just what kind of brothel the old Ivan is running.”

The Russian’s scowl goes black. But then he yanks her back inside with surprising strength, and shuts the door. He glares into her face. “Grosse Hamburger Strasse 26. It’s a detention center for Jews in transit. Only there are
some
Jews, like our ‘Grizmek,’ who have taken up residence there.
Some
who are engaged in a very specialized line of work as a member of what the Gestapo call their ‘Search Service.’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No. You’re not making sense.”

“You Germans have a very good word for it. ‘Umsatteln,’” he tells her. “To resaddle in midride. Seamlessly so. Search Service Jews are given green permits that allow them to travel freely about town. They sit at café tables,” he explains. “They ride the S-Bahn. They don’t wear the Judenstern. They sit on a bench in the park, they go to the cinema. And they watch.”

“Watch?”

“For other Jews.” He shrugs blandly. “And when one is spotted, it only takes a nod. A wave. There’s a Gestapo handler nearby who does the rest.”

She can hear Ericha’s voice in her head.
Jews who hunt Jews
. “Catchers,” she breathes.

“So, the gnädige Frau knows more than she lets on.”

Sigrid says nothing. There are no words available to her.

“Yes,
catchers.
” Melnikov nods. “Some are trying to save their own lives. Others, the lives of their family, perhaps. And others? I think such work can be very addictive. As a Jew in Gestapo custody, what are you? Nothing. Vermin to be trod upon. As a
catcher
you have
value
. Catchers are privileged. They have independence. They’re given special rewards,” he says, rubbing his fingers together, displaying the lucrative friction of booty.

“The diamonds,” Sigrid whispers.

“Can you imagine? All those Torah-kissing graybeards showing up for evacuation with little fortunes tucked into their clothes and hidden in their satchels? He’s of great worth to that gang of Stapo lunkheads, I’ve no doubt. His eye for stones is very keen. Though, as I understand it, he has quite a talent as a catcher as well. Maybe it’s the same keenness,” Melnikov suggests. “An eye that can spot the thinnest flaw in the embellishment of a gem, perhaps can spot that same flaw in the embellishment of a man. Or of a woman,” he adds. “You know, you’re not the first.”

Her eyes contract. She can suddenly feel the shame, even before she hears the words.

“There was a little
tichka
. Polish, I think. She used to make his deliveries for him. And then, for a little while, a redhead. Beautiful. Maybe a Jewess. I didn’t pry, you know. I’m an old man skating on very thin ice, so when I don’t want to know answers, I don’t ask questions,” he says. And then shrugs. “So, gnädige Frau,” he inquires with something like compassion, “do you still wish to scream?”

•   •   •

S
IGRID IS CLAMBERING
down the stairs, her stomach heaving. She makes it out of the building, and into the street, before the sickness overcomes her and she pukes bile into the gutter. A Berliner trots up to aid a distraught woman, but she cannot see his face. All she sees is the swastika on his Party pin
.
“How can I help you, how can I help you?” he keeps repeating. But she has no answer for him. She is beyond help. She has crossed into a territory far beyond the jurisdiction of curbside kindness from a stranger. Beyond the map of her existence. She has vomited out the last dregs of her old self, and is now forming into a different sort of creature. One beyond desire. Beyond mercy.

•   •   •

S
HE CARRIES
Melnikov’s revelation up the stairs toward her flat, as if carrying a mason’s tray of bricks on her back. She bleakly surveys the door that only yesterday was a passageway to a doppelgänger’s life with Egon, but is now just a plain wooden door. She tries to summon the face of Frau Weiss. Of Liesl and Ruthi, faces she thought were stamped indelibly across her memory, but now her mind is clogged. Thickened and cloudy. She sees their faces as if they have been obscured by a layer of smoke.

When she enters her flat, she finds Kaspar and his comrades from exercise therapy downing schnapps again at the kitchen table. She is relieved to be ignored by this trio as she unties her scarf and slips out of her coat. She wants to be invisible right now. They are drinking and hooting loudly at some front-liner’s joke.

Her mother-in-law is snoring in her chair by the wireless. A glass of wine has overturned and spilled onto her lap, staining her dress dark red. Sigrid does not bother to remove the glass or wake her. In fact, she takes some satisfaction in letting the old lady sleep in her own spillage. Unteroffizier Kamphauser is standing now, his parade-ground voice engorged with hilarity, imitating a particular officer’s booming commands, and the trio dissolve into fits of boozy laughter.

When there’s a knock on the door that nobody but she seems to hear, she opens it and stiffens. It’s Wolfram, in uniform. “Herr Leutnant,” she says formally, to warn him. Suddenly the chorus ceases behind her, and there’s a noise of chairs. She turns to find that Kaspar and his comrades, in the presence of an officer, have jumped to their feet. Wolfram looks embarrassed. It is the first time she has ever seen such an expression on his face.

“Please, gentlemen. Let’s dispense with such nonsense,” he tells them, and then leans heavily on his cane, making sure he is displaying the combat credentials pinned to his tunic as he offers his hand. “I’m Kessler.”

“Kamphauser, Herr Leutnant,” Unteroffizier Kamphauser declares with a heel click as he shakes.

“Kamphauser.”

“Messner, Herr Leutnant,” Unteroffizier Messner declares with a heel click as he shakes.

“Messner.”

“Schröder,” says Kaspar as he takes Wolfram’s hand. His eyes are wary as if he might be expecting an ambush.

“Ah, Schröder. The master of the house. I can’t tell you how highly my sisters speak of your wife.”

“Yes. Thank you, Herr Leutnant,” Kaspar answers tonelessly.

“In fact, I was just stopping by to deliver a small token of appreciation. We had the good fortune of obtaining a few bottles of French cognac at my office. I thought I should like to share the wealth.” He slips a bottle from under his arm and presents it. “Will you accept?” he asks. “Frau Schröder?”

“You’ll have to ask my husband, Herr Leutnant.”

Wolfram turns his face expectantly. “It is quite smooth,” he prods. “Perhaps the French are second-rate soldiers, but they are quite expert at brandy.”

“We’ll accept, thank you, sir,” Kaspar answers. “But only if the Herr Leutnant will stay for a glass.”

And now a gleam of bemusement lightens Wolfram’s eyes. “What an irresistible invitation,” he says. “I can’t say no.”

Within a half hour one drinks turns into several, as the level of the cognac bottle declines. While Sigrid is drying the dishes for return to the cabinet, Wolfram is amusing his new comrades with an overtly hilarious tale of how his commanding officer had his pisser
nipped off by a Red Army sniper while taking a leak. The men howl. And it’s only the return of Mother Schröder to consciousness, angered and embarrassed by the spill on her dress, that finally brings the evening to a close.

In the bedroom, Sigrid lies down, still in her clothes, and stares up at the ceiling. The smooth surface is marred by a spidery web of cracks and flaking paint. When she falls asleep she dreams of climbing stairs. She knows that she must get to the top. That everything depends on this, but the stairs never end. Up ahead she can hear Ericha’s voice begging her to hurry. But all she can see is darkness.