City of Women (9 page)

Outside, Sigrid must pass Mundt’s husband, sporting his dung brown SA kepi and greatcoat, which bulges at the belly as he piles another stack of coats onto the bed of a three-wheeled lorry. He gives her a gusty whistle. “So, she reamed you good, did she?” he says, and grins. Sigrid frowns and does not answer, causing the paunchy old hog to snort. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll make sure she simmers down. No trouble. Just remember that your old Uncle Mundt always takes care of his pretty ones.” He winks and then cackles, showing a mouthful of brown teeth.

•   •   •

M
OST
B
ERLIN DISPLAY WINDOWS
are filled with empty boxes now. The signs above them read
DECORATION ONLY
. “Nur Antrappen” is how it is worded. Berlin has nothing left to sell. It has been reduced by the years of war to grinding coffee from acorns, to drinking wood alcohol mixed with chemical syrup, and to filling up shop windows with nothing but “Nur Antrappen.” The dairy shop’s window is lined with milk bottles, filled with salt. Inside, maybe a few liters of actual milk will be available for those who queue up early enough. Not whole milk, of course, but skim, a thin, bluish white fluid. By the time Sigrid gets there, the sign has already been put out.
NO MORE TODAY.
So much for that. Now she must hurry over to the greengrocer’s, hoping to pick up a few green onions plus a questionable cabbage head and three and a half kilos of graying potatoes. That will be dinner for the week, plus the few kilos of war bread that her red paper ration cards will allow. But before she steps into the grocer’s she sees someone stepping out. The young Fräulein Kohl, still with her wool beret stuffed over her soot-colored hair. On one side she carries a shopping sack sagging with the weight of produce, and on the other, tucked under her arm, a striped dress box from Tempelhof’s secured with twine, and two coats. A gray-blue houndstooth and a long black wool cape. Sigrid stops dead.
Fräulein Kohl,
she starts to call out, but then swallows it. Some instinct is at work she cannot quite name. The girl continues her striding progress. Sigrid hesitates for an instant longer. Glances from side to side. Then falls in a discreet distance behind, and follows the girl’s eastwardly march.

The march ends two blocks farther, a short stretch of unremarkable pavement, at a spot where the street curves around the tall Litfass column smothered with tattered advertisements for products no longer available: Miele vacuums, Miele-Ideal, RM 58, and Miele L, RM 90. Dralle’s Birch Hair Water. The pretty blond Fräulein leans, smiling, against a birch tree trunk. Afri-Cola, with a palm tree on the bottle.
Good and German!

The building is an old double-story gray brick monstrosity from the previous century. The street-level windows off the tobacconist’s are grimed with dust. Their display cases empty. The light-bleached sign on the glass reads
CLOSED FOR INVENTORY
. The top-floor windows are boarded up, and the bricks blackened by smoke.

Sigrid watches the girl set down her burdens long enough to unlock a door tucked beside the shop. Then she gathers it all back up and vanishes inside.

So what is it? A black market in used clothes? Maybe so. Certainly there’s a market for everything in Berlin these days. Sigrid looks around and goes into a small Konditorei at the corner, where she orders a cup of coffee too tasteless to finish, and watches from the window. Maybe half an hour passes before the girl reappears on the street, without the dress box or coats, and with the contents of her shopping sack substantially reduced.

Sigrid stands, digs a few groschen from her coin purse, and drops them on the tabletop.

FIVE

S
OMETHING ODD IS GOING ON
in my building.”

Renate is smoking a cigarette. She holds it in a confidential manner, like a film star, close to her lips. “Odd? In what way odd?”

Sigrid hesitates. Perhaps she’s making a mistake. She may use the intimate form of address with Renate, but just how far does that go? Renate cocks her head to one side at Sigrid’s silence, puffing languidly. “What is it, strudel?” she inquires.

“There’s a girl, on her duty year, come to work for Frau Granzinger. Helping her with the children.”

“And you’ve fallen in love with her?”

“No.
What?
” It takes Sigrid a moment to hear that. She shakes the question off with impatience. “Renate, please, for once no jokes.”

“Well, what is a person
supposed
to think,” Renate replies, slightly bemused as she expels smoke. “You look so painfully serious. What else could it be but love?”

“She’s involved in something. I don’t know what. But something illegal.”

“
So?
Half of Berlin is involved in something illegal, and the other half
wishes
it was. It’s how to survive.”

“No, I don’t mean stoop transactions at the greengrocer’s. I mean something . . .” She does not quite have the nerve to speak the word.

But Renate, it appears, does not flinch. “
Political
,” she says with a direct gaze.

Sigrid breathes in. Looks back toward the flow of the canal. They are sitting on a bench, wrapped against the cold. “We had put out some clothing. You know. For our men in the East. Old coats, gloves, and things of that sort. But before the Hausobman came to collect, the girl made off with the lot of it.”

“You mean she
stole
it? How do you know this?”

“I saw her in the street. She took it all to an address in Moabit. Also food from her shopping sack.”

“Well, then, she’s hiding somebody,” Renate announces flatly.

Sigrid gives her a slightly uncomfortable look, as if she is experiencing an unexpected pain in an unexpected place. “Yes. I think probably so.”

“You
think
? What else could it be? A boyfriend would be my guess, trying to dodge the army. Or maybe he’s deserted.”

“But what would a
boyfriend
do with a lady’s winter cape?”

“I don’t know. What is the army going to do with my fitch fur jacket? I didn’t ask. They wanted it, so I gave it to them. Who knows? Maybe the boyfriend likes to dress like a girlfriend. It could be his disguise.”

“Very unlikely,” Sigrid says. She is watching the wands of the willow tree float mournfully on the dark surface of the canal.

“Did you have any trouble with your Hausobman over the clothes?”

Sigrid blinks. Glances back at her. “No. A little with his wife. Nothing too serious.”

Renate exhales a breath. “Then forget about it,” she advises. “What’s she to you, anyway?”

Sigrid exhales stiffly. Rewraps her half-eaten sandwich in its crinkled wax paper, and says, “I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose.”

“So mind your own business, dumpling.” Renate says this with a smile, but her eyes mean it. “Anyway, this is all far too serious. Let’s leave such silly Quatsch behind. I have a gift.”

Sigrid blinks. “A gift,” she starts to protest, but Renate raises her palm.

“Not for
you
. For your dear Mother Schröder. This should make your life easier,” Renate says, and slips a packet of cigarettes into the pocket of Sigrid’s coat, giving it a pat. “Bulgarian. Real tobacco, sugar cured. She’ll love you for it.”

Sigrid releases a small, restless laugh. “No. She’ll hate me for it. But you’re right. She’ll take them,” she says. “It seems I’m always thanking you.”

“
Phhtt
. Forget about that. Besides, it’s Gerhardt you should thank. Not me. He’s the king of contraband.”

•   •   •

THE GERMAN WOMAN DOES NOT SMOKE.

That’s what the signs read across the city. Restaurant and café owners have been banned from selling cigarettes to their female patrons. But the campaign has come to little effect, at least in Sigrid’s fourth-floor flat in the Uhlandstrasse. The old lady continues to foul the air with her Aristons, at forty pfennigs per packet of five. Above her chair in the front room, there is a permanent brown stain on the ceiling from decades of low-grade tobacco.

Sigrid enters the flat while her mother-in-law scrubs potatoes over the sink.

“Here. A present for you,” she says, and places the packet of Renate’s cigarettes on the kitchen table.

Mother Schröder quits her scrubbing. Gazes hungrily. “Where did those come from?’

“Bulgaria, I believe.”

“You know very well what I mean.”

“They were a gift.”

Eyes shoot up, appraisingly. “A
gift
?”

Sigrid frowns. “From my friend at the office.”

“Ah.” The old lady dries her hands on the dish towel and nods now with understanding. “Frau
Hochwilde
,” she pronounces. The whore.

“Look, if you don’t want them, that’s fine.” Sigrid grows impatient. “I’ll put them away. I’m sure they’ll come in handy someday.”

“No,
I’ll
put them away,” Mother Schröder suddenly insists, and snatches the packet from the table. “Knowing you, daughter-in-law, you won’t remember where they
are
in a week’s time.” Slipping the packet into the pocket of her apron, she returns to the sink and shows Sigrid her back. “By the way, that girl stopped by for you.”

Sigrid lifts her eyes from the mail. “Girl?”

“I can’t think of her name, if I ever knew it. But you know who I mean,” she insists, as if perhaps her daughter-in-law is being willfully obtuse. “The duty-year creature for Lotti Granzinger. The one who looks like trouble. Mark my words, I can spot the type.”

Sigrid drops the mail on the table and pours a glass of water from a pitcher in the icebox. “And what did she want?” she asks with a neutral voice before she takes a drink.

“How should I know? I’m not a mind reader.”

“No,” Sigrid agrees, thinking,
And thank God for that
.

•   •   •

T
HE FRONT ROOM
of Frau Granzinger’s flat is cramped with heavy, veneered furnishings. A worn woven carpet. A colored print of the Führer, rendered in pastel, prewar issue, is hung centrally on the wall, where it is surrounded by photographs of the husband and children. The slightly pudgy Herr Granzinger in his army forage cap and service uniform poses with their two oldest boys, also in uniform. A chubby trio in feldgrau. A Volksempfänger radio sits on a lace doily atop a laminated bureau. The only piece of furniture in sight with any value is a glass-fronted cherrywood curio cabinet. On prominent display inside the top shelf is the Mother’s Cross of Honor in gold, awarded by the Party. The framed certificate reads
The most beautiful name of the heart is Mother! Honor Card of the German Mothers rich in children.
And then, above a swastika,
Protecting the German Mother is the honorable duty of every German.

A herd of children stampede about Sigrid, whooping and shrieking. Sigrid stands rigidly in the middle of the room. Through the door to the kitchen she can see a pot steaming on the stove, tended by the two eldest girls, a pair of sullen things in their teens. One stirs while the other cranks the wringer and hangs dripping nappies on the line. Frau Granzinger is stationed by the bassinet jammed into the corner of the room, waging war against soiled diapers with her infant.

“No, Frau Schröder, I’m sorry,” she is saying, “but Fräulein Kohl is
not
here. In fact, she is
often
not here. Especially when I could use her most.
Fredi
,
stop that, this instant! Leave your sister alone!
” she commands. “Last week I had the laundry room booked. And what happens? She doesn’t show. I had to make do with
these two
,” she says, nodding toward the daughters. “And neither of them have the brains God gave a flea.”

Sigrid flinches at a childish shriek as two of the wild spawn do battle over possession of a toy. The male child in a Jungvolk’s “Pimpf” uniform is delighting in ripping the head from his sister’s doll. “I tell you truthfully, Frau Schröder,” Frau Granzinger declares gravely, “I had more help with the children when our little dachshund was alive. At least Pooki could keep them entertained. Now it might as well be Red Indians on the loose.” She shakes her head as she extracts the newly diapered infant from the bassinet, who immediately begins to wail. “Unless she mends her ways, I may be forced to speak to someone about that girl.” There’s a crash, as the Jungvolk boy now attacks an enemy trash basket and pretends to bayonet it with a wooden rifle.
“Friedrich! What did I say? You leave your roughhousing for outside!”

Sigrid steals a breath. “Perhaps, Frau Granzinger,” she suggests over the din, “perhaps
I
could have a word with her. I mean, I can certainly understand why you’re having trouble, but she may find it easier to talk to me. As a neutral party,” she says, though she knows how that will be translated: as one childless woman to another.

“Friedrich! Leave your sister alone, you nasty little scrapper!”
Frau Granzinger squawks, and then shakes her head with exhaustion. “You’re welcome to try, Frau Schröder. As you can see, I’m at the end of my tether. But let me warn you, she’s stubborn as a goat, that one. And far too much of an independent thinker for my tastes. No wonder they booted her out of the BDM.”

Sigrid nods sympathetically. “Ah. Is that what happened?” The BDM. Bund Deutscher Mädel, the female Hitler Youth.

Frau Granzinger crooks the crying baby over her shoulder and starts pounding the infant for a burp. “They thought that under the right influence she would come around. You know what Hetzblätter fills a girl’s head with at her age. But as you can
see
”—the woman quits her mechanical pounding long enough to fling her hand out in a gesture of resigned disappointment—“she is nowhere to be found.”

A sharp clang of metal comes from the kitchen, as one of the daughters burns her fingers on the lid from the pot of boiling diapers, and drops it with a cry of pain. “God in heaven,” Granzinger groans. “What
now
?”

•   •   •

W
HEN
E
RICHA
K
OHL APPEARS
at the door to Sigrid’s flat just after suppertime, her face is tense and even more pale than usual.

“You talked to Frau Granzinger,” she whispers tersely. “What did you
say
to her?”

Sigrid frowns. “Shut up, will you?” she answers flatly. “I’ll be asking the questions from here on out. Now go get your coat and meet me downstairs by the front door. And if anyone asks, you and I are going to the cinema. Because we love it so.”

•   •   •

T
HE STREET IS
a smear of darkness where only pinpoints of blue and red float and bob. According to the blackout regulations, no light is permissible that can be detected from a ceiling of five hundred meters. Curbstones are striped with whitewash, steps are marked with phosphorous zigzag patterns. People negotiate the sidewalks with pocket torches filtered by colored tissue paper, or, for the stalwart Party comrade who wishes to distinguish himself from a lamppost during blackouts, a lapel pin with a fluorescent swastika. One can buy them from vendors on the street for sixty pfennigs each.

Sigrid switches on her torch to pay for their tickets under an unlit marquee. When Ericha attempts a word, she shushes her curtly. Inside, the latest edition of the
Deutsche Wochenschau
newsreel casts a sputtering of light and shadow across the screen. A Waffen-SS man in a steel helmet is tramping across a stretch of frozen ground, navigating his way through a dozen corpses lying stiff as plaster, dusted with snow, as if they have been brushed with confectioner’s sugar.
More evidence of Bolshevik atrocities
, the narrator announces in a bludgeoning tone.

“May I speak now?”
Ericha whispers.

“When I say so,” Sigrid snaps back at her, glaring up at the field of bodies. The two women are planted in the rear of the balcony. Empty but for an old Berliner hausfrau who is snoring loudly.

“No one can hear us,” Ericha insists.

“How do you know? How do you know
anything
?” Sigrid suddenly bursts out. “How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m nineteen.”

“
Nineteen
. Still a girl.”

“There are boys dying at the front who are no older.”

“That’s different.”

“
Why
is it different?”

“
Because they are boys.
Boys become soldiers. It’s the natural way.”

“And girls become
what
? What is the natural way for them? To become livestock. That’s how the brown swine see us. On our backs with our legs spread, and then the same when we’re giving birth. To them that’s our only purpose. They have made us whores to motherhood.”

“
Quiet
.” Sigrid burns. “I haven’t brought you here to debate. I may not be a Party member, child, but I’m still a good German,” she warns. “And regardless of what your ‘instincts’ may tell you, I have my limits.”

Ericha glares, then slumps sullenly back into her seat. Stares up at the newsreel. “We’ll see.”

“You came to my flat this afternoon,” Sigrid says.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Treasonable reasons, I’m sure.”

“More humor like that, and I stand up and walk out right now. Is that what you want?”

Ericha still stares at the screen. “
You
are the one who brought
me
here.”

“Not for nonsense.”

The girl exhales dully. “I came by because . . . I don’t know. I just wanted to talk. That’s all. It gets so stifling in Frau Granzinger’s flat. Sometimes I have to get
out
before I am suffocated to death by the odor of diaper dirt.”

“Well, you should know that Frau Granzinger is keenly aware of your delinquency. She said that her dachshund was more help with the children than you are.”