Leaving Berlin (3 page)

In the silence he could hear the planes again, muffled, as if he were listening from below in one of the hotel shelters. Some of the guests would have been in furs, not wanting to lose them if their rooms disappeared by the time the all clear sounded. Could you actually hear fire, flames licking at walls just overhead? Then the shelter became the cell in Oranienburg, not the barracks, the interrogation cell, airless, the old nightmare, and he willed his eyes open, short of breath, and went over to the windows.

Why have blackout curtains now, live in the dark? In California you could keep the windows open, never be shut in. He pushed the heavy drapes apart, then felt the first draft of cold air seeping through. Still, better than living in a tomb. Anything was better than that.

The view faced the back, the hills of rubble that had been Wilhelmstrasse off to the left, an empty stretch of wasteland ahead, barely visible by moonlight. The new view from the Adlon. Maybe that’s why the curtains. Inside, cocooned, you could still imagine the ministries lined up in their grave permanence, not the ghost town that was actually there, a faint ashy gray in the pale light.

What Lützowplatz would be like too. The world of his childhood already belonged to memory, to old photographs. Bicycles by the Landwehrkanal, afternoons in the park, Aunt Lotte’s fussy visits—you didn’t expect any of these to survive. Things changed. Cars in the
photographs looked faintly comical. But now the city itself was gone, streets no longer there, wiped not just from memory but from any time, the standing ruins like bones left behind, carrion.

And he’d come to feed on it too, a prize catch, already caught, the bargain he’d had to make. Do whatever they wanted. And what would that be? Not just a walk in the park. He lay there, the room getting colder, seeing Ruth’s cautious eyes. Did you testify? In exile you learned to get by, principle an extravagance you could no longer afford. A lesson he thought he knew, all those years of it, and then thrown away in one heedless refusal. Would it have mattered, giving them names they already had? What if he’d done the practical thing, cooperated with the committee? But no bargain had been offered, not then. And he’d seen the faces before, the jowls and smirks, when they’d been Nazis, the same bullying voices, and he couldn’t do it. An act of contempt, cause for deportation, and then a different bargain, the one the committee would not know about.

“It’s perfect,” Don Campbell had said when they met in Frankfurt. “Telling the committee to go fuck themselves? Not even Brecht did that. Talk about lefty credentials. The Russians would never think— Perfect.”

“Perfect,” Alex had said, a monotone.

“And they want you. They think they’re pulling a fast one, getting you.”

“But I’m pulling the fast one,” Alex said, his voice still flat.

Don looked up. “That’s right. A fast one on them. And a fast one on the committee. Work with us, we’ll get you back in. New papers from State.” He nodded. “A guarantee. Uncle Sam takes care of his own.” He paused. “And you see your kid.”

The closing argument, why it was perfect, Alex’s cuffs.

“How long do I do this?”

“They’ll give you privileges,” Don said, not answering. “They do that with writers. Like they’re movie stars. Extra
payoks
.”

“What?”

“Food packages. Off ration. You’ll need them too.” He lowered his voice. “Wait till you see it. The Socialist paradise.”

“I am a Socialist,” Alex said, a wry turn to his mouth. Fifteen years ago, before life had tied him up in knots. “I believe in a just society.”

Don looked at him, disconcerted, then brought things back. “That’s why you’re perfect.”

He drifted into a half sleep, eyes closed but his mind still awake, sorting through the long day, the mayor’s welcoming speech, posing for
Neues Deutschland
, and now there was tomorrow’s reception to get through, and all the days after that. His picture would be in the papers. Irene would know he was here, if she was still alive. But why would she be? Any of them? You still have family in Germany, Martin had asked. His parents’ deaths at least had been confirmed.

“We had to check, if you had any people left,” Don had said. “The Russians use that sometimes. If the family’s in their zone.”

“Use them how?”

“Pressure. Bait. Make sure you cooperate.”

“Imagine,” Alex said.

Don looked up at him. “But it’s not an issue here. We have the records. They’re both gone, your mother, your—”

“I could have told you that.”

“We like to make sure.”

“I had an aunt. Lotte. She married into a Gentile family, so—”

“I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope.” He took out a pen. “What’s the married name? I can put a query through the OMGUS files.”

“Von Bernuth.”

Don raised an eyebrow. “Really? Von?”

“Really. They got it from Friedrich Wilhelm himself. After the Battle of Fehrbellin.” Then, seeing Don’s blank stare, “It’s an old name.”

“Nice. Rich relatives.”

Alex smiled. “Not anymore. They went through all the money. Lotte’s too, probably.”

“Where was this? Berlin?”

Alex nodded. “And Pomerania. They had property there.”

Don shook his head. “Commies broke up all the big estates. If she’s still alive, she’s probably somewhere in the West. A lot of them left after.”

“That would make her easier to trace then.”

“Easy. Try to find records in that—”

“But if you do turn anything up—on any of them.” He caught Don’s expression. “I knew the family.”

“But they’re not related. Just the aunt.”

“That’s right, just the aunt.”

Not related. Everything else.

But nothing came back on Lotte. Old Fritz had died and Erich’s army records listed him as taken POW in Russia, which probably meant the same thing. But Irene and Elsbeth had vanished. The final downfall, even the name itself gone now.

It was Elsbeth who had kept the family genealogy, in a large leather book that sat on a sideboard in the country house.

“The christening records go back to the thirteenth century,” she had said, a caretaker’s pride.

“Ouf,”
Irene said, “and what were they doing? Getting drunk and planting beets. What else is it good for?” This with a wave of her hand to the flat fields stretching toward the Baltic. “It’s still beets. Beets and beets. Farmers.”

“What’s wrong with farmers? You should be proud,” old Fritz said.

“Anyway, the Poles do all the work. Nobody in this family ever did anything.”

Lazily picking up her lemonade and leaning back against the lawn chair, as if offering herself as living proof. One of those summer afternoons,
the air too still to carry the smell of the sea, just the baking fields. Irene in shorts, her long leg propped up, making a triangle.

“Well, now is your chance to do something then,” old Fritz said, already sipping beer. “Instead of hanging around with riffraff. Drug addicts. Pansies. Out every night.”

Irene sniffed, an old complaint, not worth answering. “But still living at home.”

“Of course living at home. A girl not yet married.”

“So what should I do? Drive a tractor maybe.”

Alex smiled, imagining her up on the high seat, her hair a braided crown, like the model worker in a Russian poster. Women with wrenches, rolling up their sleeves. Not languidly painting her toenails, as she had been doing earlier, each stroke a kind of invitation, looking up and meeting his eyes, even the nail polish now part of the secret between them.

That had been the summer of sex, hanging thick in the air like pollen. The first time, every guy feels like a conqueror, a producer in California had once told him, but that hadn’t been how it had felt. A buoyant giddiness he was afraid would show on his face, a heat rising off his skin, like sunburn, flushed with it. The furtive pleasure of being let in on a secret no one else seemed to know. People just kept doing what they’d been doing before. As if nothing had changed.

No one suspected. Not Erich, not old Fritz, not even Elsbeth, usually aware of the slightest change in Irene’s moods. The risk of being caught became part of the sex. Her room at night, trying not to make a sound, gasps in his ear. On the stairs, a maid’s footsteps overhead. An outbuilding on the farm, smelling of must, the hay scratchy. Behind the dunes, naked to the sharp air, with Erich only a few yards away, at the water’s edge, the wind in his ears so that he couldn’t hear Irene panting, her release. Every part of her body open to him, his mouth all over her, and still he couldn’t get enough. Not that summer, when they were drunk with sex.

“Do? You can marry Karl Stolberg. That would be doing something. The Stolbergs have a hundred thousand acres. At least a hundred thousand.”

“Oh, then why not a von Armin? They have even more. Twice that.”

“There’s no von Armin the right age,” Fritz said, not rising to the tease.

“Then I’ll wait,” Irene said.

Fritz snorted. “You think a girl has forever to decide this?”

“Anyway, who needs more land? Why don’t you auction me off? Get some cash. Good Pomeranian stock. Untouched.” She looked over at Alex, a sly smile. “How much for a bridal night?”

“Irene, how can you talk like this?” Elsbeth said, her mouth narrowing. “To father.”

But it was Elsbeth, prim and conventional, who was offended, not Fritz, who enjoyed jousting with Irene, a daughter cut from the same rough cloth.

“Let’s hope he doesn’t ask for proof,” Fritz said. “Untouched.”

“Papa,” Elsbeth said.

“Well, it’d be worth the wait. For a von Armin,” Irene said, enjoying herself. “But then—I don’t know—maybe not. The von Bernuths only marry for love. Isn’t that right? Just like you and Mama.”

“That was different.”

“Yes? How many acres did she bring?”

“Don’t make fun of your mother.”

A woman Alex remembered always in the same full skirt, piled hair held by a tortoise comb, a Wilhelmine figure who spent her days running the house—the long, rich meals, the polishing and dusting—as if nothing had changed outside the heavy front doors, the kaiser still in place, the angry noises in the street better ignored, a time before politics.

“I can also run a trace through CROWCASS,” Campbell had said.

“What’s that?”

“Registry of war criminals. Convicted. Suspected.”

“No. They weren’t like that.”

“If you say so. Nobody was, not now. Just ask them.”

Alex shook his head. “You didn’t know them. They were in their own world. Fritz—I don’t think he ever had an idea in his head. Just shooting birds and chasing the maids.”

“Shooting birds?”

“Game birds. And deer. Hunting. It’s a big thing in that part of the world. Was, anyway.”

The house parties, long cold days in the fields, beaters up ahead, then a rush of birds up through the trees, yellow birch against the dark green firs. Lined up for pictures with the day’s kill laid out in front, bonfires, bottles of
Sekt
, dinners that went on all evening. Sometimes an invitation farther east, the thick forests of East Prussia, wild boar.

“I thought you said they were broke.”

“It doesn’t cost anything to be a guest—they were one of the old families. Anyway, they had enough for that.” He looked at Don. “He didn’t care about Hitler, any of that. They never talked about politics.”

Until it was all they talked about, the unavoidable poisoned air everyone breathed, even the dinner table under siege.

“I won’t have it in this house,” Fritz said. “All this talk. Bolsheviks.”

“Bolsheviks,” Erich said, dismissive, his father’s bluster by now a familiar joke. “It’s not Russia here.”

“So what, then? Hooligans? Maybe you prefer hooligans. Otto Wolff and the rest of your gang. Socialists. What does it even mean, ‘Socialists’? Kurt Engel. A Jew—” Catching himself, aware of Alex down the table. “Fighting in the streets. We had enough of that after the war. Spartakists. That woman Luxemburg. Of course dead. How else would she end up?”

“We’re not fighting in the streets,” Erich said, an exaggerated patience. “The Nazis are fighting.”

“And cracking skulls. Yours, if you’re not careful, and then what? Politics.” Almost spitting it out. “I don’t want trouble. Not in this house.” What he wanted was his wife, with the tortoise comb, the boiled beef with horseradish sauce, and
Kaiserschmarren
for dessert, life the way it had been. He looked at Erich. “You have responsibilities.”

“So go stick my head in the sand. How much room is left down there, where you stick yours?”

“Bolsheviks. And how do you think that’s going to end? No property rights, that’s how.”

“Don’t worry,” Irene said, “by that time we won’t have any property left, so what’s the difference?”

“Quatsch,”
Fritz said, genuinely angry.

“Well, how much is left? This house, yes, Berlin. But the country? I know you’ve been selling it off. You think nobody knows, but everybody talks. How much is left?”

“Enough to feed you. Where do you think the money goes? You think your dresses are free? Food?” His hand sweeping over the long table with the silver carving dishes.

“So it’s for us. Not the card games. Those women you—”

“Irene,” Elsbeth said.

“Oh, what’s the difference? Mother’s dead. Everybody knows.”

“Alex, you talk to them,” Fritz said, shifting, suddenly embarrassed. “How can someone at this table be with the Bolsheviks? Does that make sense? They kill people like us.”

“But what is the choice?” Alex said quietly. “The Nazis? They’ll kill everybody before they’re through.”

“Hindenburg will never accept that man. Von Papen—”

“Has no one behind him.”

“I tell you. He will never accept him.”

“Oh, you know this?” Erich said. “Your friends at the club?”

“He has to form a government,” Alex said.

“Not with Communists. Socialists.”

Alex looked at him. “Then you’ve made your choice.”

“I don’t choose any of them,” Fritz said, exasperated. “They’re all—” He turned to Erich. “You’ll see. All the same. Keep out of it. Keep your head down.” Alex’s father’s advice too, burrowing in.