City of Women (4 page)

“Geheime Staatspolizei,” the man in the leather trench coat assures everyone, displaying his aluminum warrant disc for all to peruse. He is fat. Fatter than any Berliner living on a lawful share of war rations should be. “This creature is a Jewish parasite, and is of no concern to any good German,” the fat man declares. “She has boarded public transportation in violation of the law,
and
has appeared in public without the Judenstern
that she is legally required to wear
.” The Judenstern. A cloth badge in the shape of a yellow star with six points, and the word “Jude” machine-stitched at the center in mock Hebraic lettering.

The carriage remains silent. The standing hausfrau suddenly looks hunted and slouches back down into her seat. Most eyes turn to the carriage floor. The fat man appears satisfied with this. He nods to his partner, who shoves the woman in the kerchief out of the car, and then rolls the door closed behind them.

No one speaks until the train begins to lumber out of the station, when the hausfrau, now clutching her handbag, tries to redeem herself as a good German by blustering, “Dirty Jewess, delaying the train. Now we’ll
all
be late.”

Eyes dart back and forth, but the only replies are a few loud coughs and the rattle of newspapers.

—

Two days after the coupling in the back row of the cinema, he took her to a room at the top of a dingy flight of steps. Inside, he dropped his trousers in front of her, while she was still only half out of her coat. She froze up at the sight, one arm out of her sleeve, her eyes dropping to his exposure.

“Take a good look,” he instructed her, “before we go any further. You know what this means.”

Still staring. Somehow it answered the questions that had been building. His covertness. All the hidden thought she detected behind his eyes. But all she said was, “It means you’re missing a small flap of skin.”

“It means more than that, and you know it. This is exactly what all the race laws have been written to prevent. “

She did not budge a muscle as she lifted her eyes to his face “I don’t care.”

“No? You are so eager to become a blood traitor to your race?”

“I already have become.”

“That was in the dark. This is in the light. You know what happens if we are found out. An Aryan female fornicating with a
Jew
, much less a
criminal
Jew who doesn’t wear the Judenstern? It could mean prison for you,
if you’re lucky
. If you’re not, they’ll drop you into a camp, where you’ll be breaking up rusted batteries with a wooden mallet.”

A small breath inhaled and then exhaled. She had seen the newsreels of labor camps, for the work-shy, for politicals and habitual criminals. They weren’t exactly a secret. For an instant she tried to imagine such a fate. Tried to imagine herself in a rough barracks, smashing those batteries. A prisoner in a striped smock. A race criminal. But the heat she felt rise up in her simply scorched the image from her mind. “Then we must not be found out,” she answered, and dropped her coat onto the floor.

THREE

B
UILDINGS ALONG THE BROAD AVENUE
of Unter den Linden are veiled by acres of camouflage netting festooned with artificial branches to fool Tommy into thinking he’s flying over the Spreewald instead of the middle of the city. But the area around the Hallesches Tor is much like it has always been. It’s a glum working-class slice of Kreuzberg known for its rowdy beer halls. Not a place she’d ever walk at night, but during the day it’s not so bad. Off-duty soldiers loiter about the U-Bahn station, smoking and calling to the girls. Berliners troop off to work across the Belle Alliance Brücke, which bridges the Landwehrkanal’s slow, murky green current. The U1 exits its underground tunnel and rumbles up a long stretch of elevated track toward Rummelsburg, throwing off sparks from its wheels. Only the tangy smell of smoke betrays the recent visit by the RAF bombers. A smell that will linger for days.

She enters the patent office building through the Alexandrinenstrasse door. On the wall there is a dark bronze memorial plaque listing the names of all those patent officials killed in the last war. Across the hall, one of the building porters is tacking up a poster. A leering green face with a hooked beak and drooping, malevolent eyes wears the six-pointed star on his lapel like a boutonniere.
This is the enemy of our blood!
the caption decries.
Show him no mercy!
She gazes at the poster blankly, then joins the queue to have her identity card checked by the aging policeman at the desk.

•   •   •

T
HE STENOGRAPHIC DEPARTMENT
is a drab and cavernous affair of flat gray paint and hardwood floors worn smooth. Footsteps can boom into the high ceilings like cannon fire. A photograph of the Führer is hung without irony beside the official air raid alarm instructions.
Stay calm. Obey the warden. Keep gas masks ready.

Fräulein Kretchmar arrives, clapping her hands together like the village schoolmistress. “Come, come! No time for frivolous chitchat. To work!” she scolds the roomful of women. “Think of our troops fighting the Bolsheviks.
They
have no time to waste with such twaddle, and neither do we!”

Sigrid adjusts her chair and removes the hood from her typewriter, easing herself into her standard position in front of the keys. Then, from across the room, she gets a seductively conspiratorial wink from a dusky-eyed brunette. This is Renate Hochwilde, the closest thing she has to a friend here, or anywhere else, for that matter. During their midday break, she recounts the tale of Frau Remki’s outburst. Renate shakes her head and sighs. “She’s a goner.” They are sitting outside in the grass above the Waterloo Ufer on the lower bank of the canal.

“Her husband was in the last war. He was decorated,” Sigrid tells her. “An Iron Cross, First Class.”

But Renate only shakes her head. “Makes no difference. The last war? That’s ancient history. It’s
this
war that counts. And you don’t lose your mind like that without consequences.” She says this and stretches her back languidly. Dark, luxurious curls. Feline eyes. A well-built body. Men go insane for her. “You can be
sure
that somebody has already rung up the gentlemen of the Gestapo.”

Sigrid shrugs. “Certainly,” she must agree, “that’s the likelihood.”

“So keep your distance, is my advice. That’s what I’d do.”

“It’s what we all do.”

“And is that so bad? To look out for yourself? Besides, what exactly should you be doing that you’re not?”

Shaking her head, Sigrid digs into her rucksack. “I don’t know. Nothing. There’s nothing I can do, I suppose.”

“And what should you feel
obliged
to do, anyway? Did you know this woman so well?”

“I helped her with shopping a few times. That sort of thing.” The morning has produced a flaccid sunshine, but it’s revitalizing after the hours under the fluorescent lamps of the patent office. Sigrid is happy to feel even this weak sunlight on her face. She closes her eyes to it. “It’s my mother-in-law who’s known her for ages.”

“Ah. Dear Mother Schröder,” Renate pronounces archly. “And is
she
rushing off to plead this crazy woman’s case?”

“Not as of this morning.”

“No, I would think not. For once the old gorgon can give you a lesson worth learning. Are you still fighting with her?”

“Always.”

Renate produces a cucumber from her bag and bites into it. “I don’t know how you stand it,” she says, chewing. “I think if I had to live with
my
mother-in-law under the same roof, there’d be blood on the floor within a week. Hers or mine, I’m not sure. The funny thing is that Oskar feels precisely the same way about her.” Oskar is Renate’s husband, a driver for a staff officer posted in France. Supposedly, he is aware of his wife’s myriad trysts, but makes no objections. “He doesn’t care,” she insists. “He has a wife whose picture he can show about. He adores the children, and I’m sure he gets plenty of what he needs from those pretty mademoiselles.”

Stretching like a cat, Renate purrs over the thought of her latest bedmate. “Oh, he’s very
appealing
.
Very
fierce
eyes
,
” she says. “Older, you know. Younger is hard to find these days. But still with the body of an athlete. And, of course, fabulous under the sheets.”

“Um-hmm.” Sigrid nods. “Well. Aren’t
all
your conquests?”

“I suppose,” Renate replies airily. “But I like this one. He’s polite.”

“You mean he holds the door for you?”

“I mean, he’s not simply interested in
his
pleasure.”

“How virtuous. What’s he do?” she asks. “For a living, that is.”

Renate takes another bite from her cucumber and chews dutifully. “I’m not sure, really. He has a firm of some sort in the Potsdamer Platz. But we don’t talk much about it, as you might imagine. In fact, we hardly talk at all.”

“Married?’

Renate shrugs. Who cares? “Shipped off to the country with the
kinder
, where it’s safe. The family abode is in Zehlendorf, but he keeps a cozy little flat off the Potsdamer Platz. For
business
,” she says.

Sigrid smiles, but as she watches the wands of the willow tree float on the canal’s marble green surface, the smile wanes. She treasures Renate but is frightened by her as well. Frightened by all that desire, the bottomless hunger. “Should I envy you?” she asks.

“Envy?” Her eyebrows rise. “Why?”

“Why? You have no fear of your own
appetites
.”

To which Renate replies with a laugh. “Well, in truth, it is
I
who should envy
you
. Isn’t it? All that self-control.”

Tell me something no one else knows.

On the bus ride home, Sigrid stares through the window. Stares into the past stowed inside her head.

There is nothing to tell
, he’d answered.
I have no secrets
.

She divided her life into two sides of a mirror. On one side of the mirror was her true life with Kaspar and his mother, which felt false. Every morning, she left the flat with Kaspar, as he was off to his work at the bank. They traveled together as far as the Nollendorfplatz, at which point he would give her a pat on the arm and wish her a pleasant day. Her part-time job at the patent office was not as rewarding as she pretended, but it gave her an excuse to be absent from her mother-in-law’s flat in the afternoons when she was asked to work “extra hours” for the war effort. Who wasn’t working extra hours now, anyway? And when that excuse wore thin, there were always the films. A matinee with a friend from the office.
Renate Hochwilde is her name. She’s one of the other stenographers. Her husband’s just been called up
, Sigrid would explain.
I think she’s lonely.
Mother Schröder would frown at the idea of such excursions when there was plenty of cleaning to do, but then she frowned at everything. And Sigrid took over washing the supper dishes so that her mother-in-law could sit and listen to the wireless. Rosita Serrano’s cool, clear voice singing “La Paloma.”
She would scrub the skillet and think of the sound of Egon’s voice. The heat of his breath on her skin.

On the opposite side of the mirror was the life that felt true. A rendezvous in front of the cinema. Then off to the cramped one-room flat, belonging to a “friend.” The stairs creaked forlornly on their way up, and the hall smelled of failing plumbing and hardship. This had become their routine. But when she asked him her question—
A friend? What kind of friend?—
the answer was None of Her Business: the name of a land so much more vast than the simple boundaries of a hardscrabble district in eastern Berlin. He still listened to her when she talked, but now she suspected he was simply using her talk to camouflage his silence.

Outside, the air was frigid. Inside, they had generated their own heat. The windowpanes were smeared with condensation. From the knot of blankets she gazed at him as he lit his cigarette, dragged in the smoke, and then exhaled it sloppily. She liked to see him stand naked so casually. Kaspar was different. He never undressed in front of her. And after their business in bed was concluded, he redressed under the covers, before slumping over to his side and collapsing into sleep. Kaspar would never allow her to gape at his ass, standing by a window. He would never turn and show her his member, hanging at rest.

“You look thoughtful,” he told her.

“Just thinking about how far away you are from the bed.”

He gave her an uneven smile that was more interior than exterior, and climbed back onto the mattress. Taking a drag from his cigarette, he blew smoke toward the ceiling.

“I think a circumcised cock is an honest organ. It looks so naked. So unsheathed,” she told him, drowsing her hand over it. “It has nothing to hide. All men should have such an honest cock.” And then she said, “Funny, that word still feels so strange in my mouth.”

“The word or the organ?”

“Ha!” She laughed and slapped her hand against his arm. “If you’re worried, I’ll confess that I’ve come to love the taste of both.”

And now he laughed, too, but she could tell that there was something secret behind his eyes. This was nothing new. She’d seen it many times, and had always been able to ignore it, but wondered now if there would come a moment when that would change. She leaned over and kissed him thickly on the mouth, and he kissed her back, holding his cigarette up in the air. Was it politeness? No ashes or embers dropped on your lover’s delicate flesh? Or perfunctory. Kissing her to the depth required before he could return to his smoking? These were the types of questions with which she battered herself, but only when they were together. Or when they were apart. Just another sample of the minutiae of their connection that would roll around like a marble for days in her brain. Moments before, his mouth had tasted of her. Had tasted of the last place his mouth had been, between her thighs. But this kiss tasted only of tobacco.

•   •   •

A
T NIGHT
, she came home to 11G. Shelling beans or peeling potatoes for supper, while her mother-in-law fussed over her roast or her chops. The radio masked the silence between them. And when Kaspar came home from the bank, he would kiss them both on the forehead, then go change into a sweater. She was never required to return his kiss, which was a relief, because she feared that she would be incapable of kissing without passion after her hour with Egon. At the table, she was also relieved that she was not required to contribute to the talk. Mother Schröder would yammer on. Kaspar would grunt with polite interest at appropriate moments. So it surprised her one evening when her husband turned his eyes on her and asked, “How was your day?”

She felt caught, as if the thoughts inside her head had just been turned inside out for all to see. As if Egon had suddenly taken a chair at the table.

“
My
day?”

A mildly wry smile. “Yes.
Yours
,” he assured her.

“It was fine,” she answered, and then waved away the question. “Uneventful.” For an instant, she was convinced that he
knew
about everything. That she had been fooling no one. But then he only nodded. “Good,” he said, and went on with supper. At bedtime, he gave her the same chaste kiss as always before settling his head onto the pillow. She turned and faced the wall, staring at her memory of Egon’s face.

There was no part of herself from which she forbade Egon. She was unlocked. Undefended. An open gate. In the aftermath she was shellacked in sweat, though the windowpanes were sticky with frost. She shoved the wet strings of hair from her eyes, and stared up into his face, which hung above her like the sun. She felt herself smile in simple reflex. “I want you to tell me something.”

“Tell you?” His face was arranged into an easy, sated expression, but some fragment of caution had entered his voice. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me something no one else knows.”

“There is nothing to tell,” he answered. “I have no secrets.”

“You have nothing
but
secrets,” she pointed out. “So tell me something.”

“My name is Weiss.”

This was not exactly what she had in mind. “What?”

“My name is Weiss,” he repeated, and rolled onto his back to pick up his cigarette pack, the paper crinkling as he rummaged about inside. “It’s the name that I was born to.”

“I see. So, your name is Weiss,” she said.

“Don’t sound disappointed, Sigrid. That’s an explosive bit of intelligence. Not many know it.”

A breath. “It’s a very sharp name,” she observed, trying to make the best of it. “It sounds like the swish of a saber blade.
Weiss
,” she said, demonstrating with a whoosh.

“A Jew’s name,” he pointed out blandly, and lit up.

“No. It is
your
name.”

“Precisely my point, Frau Schröder.”

She didn’t like it when he addressed her in this way. Didn’t like the scorn it veiled. Perhaps it was her punishment for squeezing a secret from him. So was it
her
retribution when she suddenly said, “Tell me about your wife.”