City of Women (35 page)

“Rest,” the girl repeats. “That’s a foreign word.”

Sigrid slips off Ericha’s shoes and lifts her feet onto the bed. Drapes the bedspread over her and perches on the edge of the mattress.

“I want you to promise me something, Frau Schröder,” Ericha says. “When the day comes to do this, I want you to promise me that you’ll stay home. Press your husband’s shirts like a good hausfrau or argue with your mother-in-law. Better yet, go to your lover.”

“Ericha.”

“Everything will go smoothly without you. It’s all planned out, and there’s no reason why anything should go wrong. But if it
does
, then there’s no reason they should get us all. So you will promise me that you will stay away from the Anhalter Bahnhof.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You must.”

“So now
you’re
giving the orders?”

“Someone will have to continue, Sigrid. If we’re taken, then someone must be left.”

“What about your new friends with their broad network.
They
won’t be continuing?”

“They’re not interested in saving people. They’re only interested in politics. So you must agree. You must promise me.”

“Close your eyes,” she whispers, and brushes a strand of hair from the girl’s forehead. “If I
must
promise you, then I
will
promise you.”

Ericha nods lightly. “Thank you,” she breathes as her eyes drift shut. But when Sigrid starts to stand, the girl squeezes her wrist.

“Stay,” Ericha whispers. “Can you? Just for a bit?”

Gently, Sigrid places her hand over Ericha’s. “Yes,” she whispers. “I can stay.”

•   •   •

S
HE IS STANDING
on the landing, the walls shake with the bombing. Fire scorches the ceiling, and all she can think of are the
sand buckets
.
Where are the sand buckets?
When the floorboards beneath her feet separate, she latches onto the railing, but the railing is attached to nothing, and she is falling, plummeting into a swirling black hole.

Sigrid awakes with a start, settled in the padded armchair by the bed. She blinks, dimly trying to decide where she is, and then wipes her face with her hands. The stove has gone out, and the room is cold. She can see daylight edging through a crack in the blackout curtain, so she shoves it aside, and the Berlin morning invades the room. Her heart falls when she sees that bedclothes are twisted in a heap but the bed is empty.

•   •   •

S
HE LOCKS THE DOOR
to Wolfram’s flat and travels down the stairs, excusing herself around a young female Ostarbeiter scrubbing the tile floor of the foyer. The woman mumbles contritely in Polish and keeps her eyes on her scrub bucket. Outside, the chill of the morning awaits her. She carefully glances about, checking for idling autos or any men loitering innocuously about the newspaper canisters, but sees only a few Berliners minding their own business as they travel the sidewalk. So she is shocked when a hand seizes her from behind by the hair, and yanks her to one side. “This way, Liebste,” Egon tells her and guides her painfully into the narrow alley around the corner.

“You’re hurting me.”

“
Hurting
you? You’re lucky I don’t wring your fucking
neck
.” He pushes her roughly against the alley wall and presses his face into hers. Holding up the diamond pouch, he turns it upside so the contents spill out. “
Rock sugar
,” he seethes. “You took my diamonds and left me
rock sugar
.”

“That’s right,” she breathes.

“Why?”

“Because there are those who have needs greater than yours.”

“Sigrid,” he says, pronouncing her name as if he might bite it in half. “Sigrid, I
want
my
diamonds.
”

“Go to hell,” she tells him.

“You
bitch
,” he swears, and cracks her across the face with the back of his hand. She expels a yelp of pain, as he seizes her chin in his hand.
“I want my property!”

“It’s not,” she manages. “It’s not
your
property.”

“It
is
! It belongs to
me
!”

“
No
. No, it belongs to the Jews whom you sent to their
deaths
.”

Silence
.

“It belongs to
them
! Like that pretty watch you wear
.
Like the money in your pocket and the fancy coat on your
back
.”

His face hangs in front of her, still contorted.

“I know what you
are
,” she assures him. “I know what you’ve
done
.”

His teeth grind. “You know
nothing
.”

“How many
lives
, Egon? How many lives did you trade for your own?”

“So now you think you are the expert. But you’re not.
You’re an idiot!
A silly cunt who knows
nothing
!”

“Tell me about Freya.”

“Freya,” he repeats.

“I hear she is quite the dish. Was she good in the
sack
?”

“My God, is
that
—” He simply can’t believe it. “Is
that
what this is? A
woman’s
jealousy
? You make me ill, Frau Schröder.”

“You’re a
murderer
.”

“
No.
I’m an animal. A simple human animal. If I kill, it’s for the sake of survival.”

“You mean
your
survival.”

“Yes, my survival!”
he blasts her. “You know, you are so
thick
. Such a fucking hausfrau. I think I would like to
crack
your stupid skull open! Do you know
that
?” he hisses, and then freezes up.

She watches his expression go rigid. Her breathing deepens. “Do you feel that?” she asks him.

He stares. “Yes.”

“Then you know what it’s for,” she says, pressing the muzzle of Kozig’s revolver into his belly.

“You won’t use it,” he assures her. “Though I wish to God you would.”

“Take a step back,” she commands.

He waits, but then steps back. She digs something out of her pocket and then drops it on the damp black paving stones. A brown envelope and a fold of Reichsmarks fastened together with a thick elastic. “That’s for you. A Reisepass, a new Arbeitsbuch, a commercial registry card, and travel permit, plus a letter of exemption from military service due to your
essential
war work. Your name is Hans Richter. You’re an assessor for the National Insurance Office,” she says, still gripping the revolver. “Everything you’ll need to get to where you’re going, including two hundred marks and an up-to-date subscription record for the
Völkischer Beobachter
.”

“May I pick it up?” he asks grimly.

“Yes.”

He does so, stuffing the envelope into his coat pocket. “Two hundred marks,” he says, “isn’t going to get me far.”

“It’s what you’ve got. You should count yourself lucky that you’re traveling west instead of east.”

“And what if I were to push you against this wall right now, and kiss you hard on the mouth?”

“First you want to kill me, then you want to kiss me. You should make a decision, Egon.”

“You’re the one who is aiding my escape with one hand, while pointing a pistol at me with the other. I think it’s
you
who should make a decision.”

She stares into his darkened face. Then thumbs back the revolver’s hammer. “I don’t know much about guns,” she admits. “But I believe the next step is to squeeze the trigger.”

Egon lifts his eyes from the pistol. “Becoming a killer takes courage, Frau Schröder. Not fairy-tale courage, but the courage to leave it all behind. To become a different sort of creature.” For a moment, he gazes at her. “I’m not sure you’ve reached that point yet.”

She tightens her grip on the revolver’s handle. She knows that if he tried, he could wrench the thing from her hand. She wonders if he knows it, too. His gaze tells her nothing. It is like staring into a face cut from stone. Then a noise comes from the end of the alley. The Polish scrub girl opens a door and dumps her pail of dirty water. She looks up at them, holding her bucket, and pauses. Speaks a word in Polish. Egon frowns. “Next time,” he tells her, “you’ll have to be stronger,” and then gathers his coat closed and stalks away.

•   •   •

W
HEN SHE ENTERS
the flat in the Uhlandstrasse, she finds it empty. The door to 11G creaks open into silence. She takes off her scarf and hangs it up. Slips off the coat and hangs it up, too. The wind rattles the taped window glass briefly. She smooths her skirt as she surveys the room’s emptiness. Then walks over to the stove. Drops in three briquettes of coal with the shuttle, and strikes a match. The fire catches. It burns evenly, obediently. She feels the heat on her face grow.

In the bedroom, she checks the mirror. Touches the spot on her cheek where he struck her. A pinkish imprint of the force of his knuckles. It hurts, but she feels numb to the pain. She turns away and retrieves the cigarette tin. She wonders for a moment if Kaspar has ever discovered the tin’s contents. She certainly hadn’t made much of an effort to hide them, even after her run-in with Mother Schröder. A few pairs of flannel stockings, and a nylon chemise in a drawer constitute their only camouflage.

The stove is hot by now, emitting a stinging heat into the air. She must lift the lid with the iron tongs. A bright orange fire fills the stove’s belly. Sigrid opens the tin, and tugs open the ribbon binding the packet of letters. She opens the flap on the top envelope, revealing the heated upstroke of his handwriting. The words
without mercy
are all she can read. Then she closes the flap and drops the letter into the stove. The envelope writhes, then blackens as she watches it disintegrate in flames.

It takes only a matter of minutes before all of them are ashes.

NINETEEN

S
HE SPIES THE MAN
with the monkey ears and the snap-brim brown fedora on the train. After the Nollendorfplatz, she sees him, standing a few meters away, a newspaper tucked under an arm, as he clings to the handrail, intentionally paying her not a whit of attention. When she leaves the train at the Hallesches Tor, she catches him briefly behind her, but then he disappears.

Inside the patent office, she hurries past the old guard, who must call her back to look at her identity card. She is late. Impatiently waiting. When she enters the stenographic room, there is a brief cessation of typewriter chatter. When Fräulein Kretchmar calls her into the office in the corner, all eyes remain locked in their proper places, and the rattle of keys on the paper sounds like a kind of thunder. Only Renate lifts a glance from her desk, but her eyes are expressionless.

In the office, Fräulein Kretchmar closes the door and seats herself behind a steel desk. “Sit, Frau Schröder,” she instructs.

“No, I don’t think I will, thank you,” Sigrid answers.

The woman gazes morosely at her through the lenses of the pince-nez adorning her nose. “Very well, as you wish. I’m afraid I must inform you, Frau Schröder, that I have been directed by Herr Esterwegen to dismiss you from your position. This to take effect immediately. If you have any personal effects, you may retrieve them from your desk.”

“And may I inquire, Fräulein Kretchmar,” Sigrid asks thickly, “as to the reason for my dismissal?”

“It has been determined by those in superior positions that your continued employment by the Reichspatentamt would be a detriment to productivity, and a risk to the good name of the office.”

“I see,” Sigrid says dully. “And is that your opinion as well?”

But Kretchmar only shakes her head, her mouth clamped in a tight line. Choosing a rubber stamp from a rack, she thumps the file on her blotter. “Take this to the second floor,” she says, handing it over. “Your final wages will be issued to you.”

Sigrid pauses only an instant before accepting the file.

Kretchmar’s attention turns to the papers stacked on her desktop. A vein pulses in her neck as she says, “Best of luck to you, Frau Schröder. Heil Hitler.” But then, as Sigrid turns her back on the woman and slips her hand onto the door handle, Fräulein Kretchmar finds the words she could not speak a moment before. “You
understand
,” she says, “you understand that I had no say in this matter. The decision was made by higher authorities. I can only do as I’ve been instructed.”

“I
understand
, Fräulein Kretchmar, that someday,” Sigrid replies, “someday you will open up your eyes and wonder what has become of your life. And the only answer will be that you have
squandered
it, trying to prove something to these men. These
higher authorities
of yours. Trying to elicit from them some minuscule measure of respect or equality, which you will never receive. Not ever.”

Kretchmar gazes back. Behind her, the message canisters whoosh through the pneumatic tubes.

•   •   •

O
N THE TRAIN
, Sigrid burrows into the silence beneath the rattle of the cars. She doesn’t think of the patent office. She doesn’t think of the singular blankness of Renate’s glance. She doesn’t even think of Herr Kozig’s bloodless death mask. She thinks that, if she closes her eyes, she can still imagine Egon’s hands touching her body. The pleasing roughness of his fingers on the skin of her shoulder. His palm lightly dancing across her nipple.

Suddenly there is an intrusion. A body squeezing into the space beside her, too close. For an instant she thinks Egon has returned, but the body is the wrong size. Too stringy. No meat on it. She gazes into the angry, hawkish face of the U-boat youth from Auntie’s pension.

“Where is he?” he demands in a scrubby whisper.

She gazes back without words.

“I have a knife,” he hisses, “so you’d better tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. The catcher named Grizmek. I’ve seen you with him. Where is he?”

A blank glare. She thinks for an instant of Herr Kozig’s little pistol she has wrapped in a handkerchief at the bottom of her bag. “I have no idea,” she says.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Tell me. Tell me or maybe I’ll slit your throat right here.”

“No,” Sigrid says, not removing her eyes from the boy’s. “No, I don’t think you will.”

The boy’s face clenches like an angry fist, but his eyes are suddenly enraged with grief. “He murdered my sisters. They’re dead, because he turned them in to the Gestapo. He might as well have killed them with his own hands.”

“Frau Schröder?” a voice inquires with a sharp concern.

Sigrid’s eyes twitch toward a stubby soldier who is leaning forward from the opposite side of the carriage. It’s one of Kaspar’s drinking comrades from the kitchen table, though it takes her a moment to summon the name. “Unteroffizier Kamphauser,” she says.

“I thought it was you,” he says. “Are you all right?” he inquires more closely, his voice gaining weight as his eyes roll toward the youth, training the gun sight gaze on him. “Is this Schurke giving you trouble?”

But before she can answer, the train bursts into the station, and the boy is up, shoving into the crowd exiting to the platform. The soldier stands abruptly, as if to give chase, but Sigrid waves her hand. “No. No, please. It’s fine. Just an overly excited boy.” The doors are rolled closed, and the train ambles forward. She gains a glimpse of the boy’s face on the platform for a moment, staring with anguished rage.

“Thank you, Herr Kamphauser,” she says, her hand pressed to her breast, slowly breathing in, slowly breathing out. Recovering.

The soldier sits down, then nods his head. “No need for thanks. Though, actually, I’m Messner. Kamphauser is the tall one.”

A blink of confusion, then, “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“No need.”

“My head, you understand, is so full of cobwebs these days.”

“It’s nothing. I answer to anything,” he grins. A joke. In the gloom of the U-Bahn, his complexion has lost its fermented ruddiness and gone muddy. “Frau Schröder, please excuse me. I don’t mean to talk too much. Or to bother you. It’s just that there’s something I feel I should say. It’s something I’ve been thinking about, and since we’ve met like this . . .”

She looks at him carefully. “Yes?”

“You know,” he begins with a slightly uncertain note in his voice, “I just want to say that your
husband . . .
”

“My husband,” she repeats blankly.

“Your husband,” he says, “is really the sort that keeps a mutt like me going.”

Another blink. “He is?” she replies, surprised by a sudden urge to listen.

“Oh, yes. I mean, I
know
what I am, Frau Schröder.” He chuckles bleakly. “I’m dirt. I’m nobody. But a man like your husband, who worked as a bank officer. Who has a nice flat and a good wife. For him to invite me to his home, it
means
something,” he says. “It truly does. I don’t mind admitting that I’m going to miss him greatly.”

Something in her stops dead. “Say that again.”

“I said, I’m going to miss him,” Messner repeats. “When he returns to active duty.”

She hears this, then watches the impact of her expression on his.

“You knew this, didn’t you?” He is sounding suddenly anxious. “I mean, you
must have
known this already.”

“Are you saying,” Sigrid breathes in. “Are you saying that he’s been recalled to the front?”

“No. No, not recalled,” Messner frowns. There’s a helpless insistence to his voice. “But surely you
know
this, Frau Schröder.”

“Know
what
, Herr Messner?”

“He volunteered.” A crooked pain shapes the man’s face. “When he heard that his regiment was being redeployed to the Ukraine, he volunteered to rejoin them.”

“But. But he
can’t
. You must be wrong about this. He’s been
wounded
. He’s still going to the hospital for therapy, for God’s sake.”

“One of the doctors at the hospital certified him as fit.”

“
Fit?
And is this doctor
insane
?”

“I’m . . . I’m certain they won’t put him on the line,” he tries to reassure her. “There are plenty of jobs in the rear. He could be clerking for a transport company, just as he’s doing now,” he says with hope.

“No.” She shakes her head at the floor of the carriage. “No, this is too much.”

“I
apologize
, Frau Schröder. I opened my trap when I shouldn’t have, obviously, and I’m sorry. Please don’t tell him it was me who spilled the beans, will you?” he pleads. “I wouldn’t want him to think ill of me.”

Sigrid looks back at Messner, but really she has stopped seeing the man. Stopped hearing what he is saying.

•   •   •

K
ASPAR OPENS THE DOOR
, and stops long enough to survey her at the kitchen table. Then shuts the door and hangs up his greatcoat. “What are you doing?” he inquires.

“Having a drink. Would you like one? I have a glass ready for you.”

For a moment he does not respond. Then he sits down and faces the glass as Sigrid dumps out three fingers of schnapps.
“Prosit,”
she offers, and empties her glass in a swallow.

“I’ve never seen a woman do that before,” he remarks, then downs his own.

“Never?” She takes the bottle and pours two more measures. “Not even your whores from the Warthegau?” When he doesn’t answer, she says, “You know, I happened to see one of your comrades from the hospital on the U-Bahn.”

“And he was sober?”

“He told me that you are the sort that keeps him going.”

“Me?
I
am the sort?”

“You, yes. Because you worked as a bank officer. Because you have a nice flat and a good wife.”

He stares at her and she stares back.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Kaspar? I thought you said you wanted only the truth between us.”

His mouth turns downward at the edges. “I didn’t think it would matter to you,” he answers.

“My husband has volunteered to return to the front, and he didn’t think it would matter to me?”

“Why would it? You have your man tucked away to keep you satisfied. Why would you care what I do?”

“So that’s
it
? It’s male jealousy? The mortar wounded your body, but I’ve wounded your pride, so you’re marching back to Russia to make yourself a target for all those machine gunners who missed you the first time?”

“How much of this kerosene have you swallowed already?” he asks, examining the bottle.

“Never mind. That’s beside the point. The point is that you lied to me.”

“No, I simply omitted the truth.”

“A fine distinction.”

“One with which you’re familiar.”

“I’ve tried to be truthful with you, Kaspar.”

“No. Perhaps you haven’t
lied
outright, but you’ve tried
not
to be truthful with me, unless absolutely necessary. Another fine distinction, I know, but an important one.”

“All right, then, since you’re asking for the full truth? The truth with no holes in it? You’ll get it. More than you’ll have wished for,” she assures him. Killing her shot, she exhales a flat breath. “I’m hiding Jews from the Gestapo.”

Kaspar’s face is unmoved for a moment. Then he almost smiles, as if his hearing must be playing tricks. He looks at her again with incomprehension. For an instant she can recall the puzzled expression of the young man she had married. It’s the expression he would wear when faced with a dilemma outside the prescribed lines of his experience. An expression she had always found at once irksome and endearing. “Is that a joke, Sigrid?” he finally asks. “Are you trying to shock me?”

“Not a joke, Kaspar. Just the truth you were asking for. I’m part of a group.”

Incredulous. “A group hiding Jews.”

“Not restricted to Jews. Anyone who needs help.”

“Help?”
A wire of anger is weaving itself into his voice. “Well, this is rather insane,” he says, with his teeth clenching into a humorless grin, as if he might decide to chomp on the air. “This is really rather insane.”

“Yes. I’ll agree.”

“
Will
you? Well, very nice. How very nice it is that my wife
agrees
with me,” he steams, “on the subject of her insanity.”

“Not my insanity, Kaspar.”

“And by
help
, when you say the word
help
, what does that mean? You help them evade the police?”

“Yes.”

“Criminals.”

“That depends on your definition of the word.”

“
Criminals.
People who have committed
crimes
. People have broken the
law
.”

“Unjust laws.”

“But the
law
,
just the same.” His eyes are darkening.

“Yes.”

“Deserters, too?”

“You mean men who have ‘simply had enough of this war’? Weren’t those
your
words?”

His voice gains volume. “I mean men who have abandoned their
posts.
”

“Probably. I often don’t
know
their reasons for having gone underground. Only that they have them.”

“And is that where you’ve found your lover? Among these men?”

“It’s not just men, Kaspar. Also women. Also children.”

“Women, children, yes.” He nods starkly. “But that doesn’t answer my question, does it? Please, Sigrid,” he says, with a hollow, almost manic note entering his voice. “Please tell me that my wife is screwing a criminal or a deserter. Please tell me that
at least
she’s screwing a
German
and not a—”

But he doesn’t finish the sentence. The look on her face has stopped him, so the unspoken word of the unfinished sentence weights the air between them. Kaspar drops his head and shakes it at the table.

Sigrid says nothing. She is watching him around the edges, where the hidden heat of his temper has always been signaled by a twitch of muscle, a flex of his fist. But there is an eerie animal stillness to him now that she does not recognize. She can hear him breathing. Thin, measured breaths. As if he has gone in to a kind of hibernation inside himself.