Stattin Station (10 page)
'Maybe. That's what I want to think about.'
'Okay, but I don't want to think that I've given birth to a monster. You, my darling, have taught me that every now and then - in fact, much of the time - it pays to go with your first instinct.'
'Have I really?' She placed a hand on one of his. 'We must be the best-balanced couple in Berlin by now.'
'Other than Magda and Joey.'
'Wash your mouth out.'
The noon press conference at the Foreign Ministry saw Paul Schmidt replace his underling von Stumm, and Russell's first glimpse of the fat young Prussian as he made his confident entrance was enough to tell him that something bad had happened. Schmidt wasted no time in telling the assembled press corps what that was: Rostov - 'the gateway to the Caucasus' - had fallen to the Wehrmacht. A collective sigh was audible, the appreciation of Germany's allies mingled with the scarcely-concealed despair of the supposed neutrals. For the Caucasus, as Schmidt delighted in explaining at length, contained enough oil to keep the panzers and Stukas in almost perpetual motion. It was, he said, a crucial step on the road to inevitable victory.
The allied journalists wanted more tales of triumph, but Schmidt was more interested in goading the neutrals. Perhaps the warmonger Roosevelt would think twice about dragging his countrymen into a war that few of them wanted; perhaps even Churchill might stop preening himself for a few hours, and acknowledge that Britain's position grew more hopeless by the day. Questioned about British claims that their new offensive in North Africa was going well, Schmidt offered a disdainful smile and a smug invitation to wait and see. One side was clearly kidding itself, and Russell had a sinking feeling it might be his own.
After the conference he walked up to the Adlon, expecting to find a message from Strohm confirming the arrival of Monday's train at Lodz. The lack of one was probably insignificant, but added to Russell's sense of frustration. Lying in bed the previous night it had suddenly occurred to him that Strohm, with his presumed KPD connections, might know what had happened to Zembski. But Russell had no way of contacting the man. He would have to wait for Strohm's next call, which added a somewhat sinister note - that the corollary of setting his own mind at rest was the dispatch of another trainload of Berlin's Jews into the dark unknown.
Effi met her older sister Zarah for lunch at Wertheim's, or Awags as it was now officially called. The restaurant was quite full, but the clientele had not been attracted by the quality of the food, which seemed noticeably worse than on their previous visit in October. The department store, as Zarah had already discovered, was in no better shape - half the cage-lifts were permanently out of order and there was absolutely nothing worth buying. Over the last year or so, Effi's relationship with her sister had become increasingly constrained. Once her son Lothar had started school Zarah had found herself with a lot of time on her hands, and little idea of how to use it in an increasingly austere Berlin. Her husband, Jens, seemed to spend most of his waking hours working at the Economic Ministry, and those that remained poring over his coin collection. He was almost always in a bad mood, which enraged Zarah. What did he have to be depressed about? - he had something worthwhile to do. And, whenever Effi tried to describe how she felt about making films for Goebbels' propaganda machine, she received short shrift from her older sister. What was Effi, a film star for heaven's sake, complaining about? She had a wonderful career and a man that she loved who spent time with her; how much better could it get?
Effi, for her part, felt bad that she could no longer confide in Zarah. Before the war they had told each other everything, had in fact been more honest with each other than they were with their respective partners. But all that had ended for Effi when she and Russell had decided on resistance. A safe-as-they-could-make-it kind of resistance, admittedly, but beyond anything that Zarah would understand or want to share. She had never been interested in politics, and Jens, though a decent husband and a doting father, was also a long-time Party member with an important job in the Nazi administrative machine. The things that kept Effi awake at nights were no longer things she could share with her sister, and these days their conversations revolved around less essential topics - Lothar's progress at school, their aging parents, the latest shortages, the movies that Zarah saw in her thrice-weekly trips to the cinema.
This particular meeting was no different. Lothar was loving school, their mother was already worrying about Christmas, the dentist down Zarah's street had started using aluminium for fillings. How was Jens? She hardly ever saw him, and when she did his mind was somewhere else. This war was having a terrible effect on family life.
Effi loved Zarah, but sometimes she wanted to shake her.
As he wiled away the hours in a Press Club armchair waiting for the Promi briefing, Russell overheard one of his colleagues offering long odds on them all still being around at Christmas. The man was probably right, he thought. If he was going to get presents for his son, then now was the time to do it. Christmas shopping, moreover, seemed a much better use of his time than listening to Goebbels gloat over the capture of Rostov.
In pre-war days Paul's favourite toyshop had been Schilling's on Friedrichstrasse, just beyond the station. Last time they had visited the spacious emporium - just before his son's birthday the previous March - the shelves had been almost empty, but Russell could think of nowhere better to try.
A tram got him there just before closing time, but he was soon wondering why the shop had bothered to open. The only items suitable for boys of Paul's age were cheaply-made board games with names like 'Bombs over England' and 'Panzers to Moscow.' The Third Reich might be short of most things, but cardboard was obviously plentiful.
Disappointed, Russell walked back under the bridge and climbed the stairs to the elevated platforms. With no toys, no meat and precious little alcohol, a merry Christmas seemed somewhat unlikely, although Goebbels' hacks had done their best to evoke the true Christmas spirit, re-writing 'Silent Night' as a paean to the Fuhrer.
He
would be standing guard over them all.
He
would have no time for fun.
The Stadtbahn train rattled in over the bridge, full of rush-hour passengers and smelling as bad as usual. Russell clung to a strap as it crossed and re-crossed the wintry-looking Spree, and wondered whether Effi would be there when he got home. Stepping out onto the platform at Zoo Station, the first thing he noticed was the sound of barking dogs.
There were two of them, both Alsatians, slavering and straining at their leashes. Two young
Ordnungspolizei
- Orpo, as they were universally known - were pulling on the other ends, and looking round nervously for further instruction. The leather coats were clearly in charge, and three of them were half dragging, half kicking, a young man out of the next carriage. One of the Gestapo men wrenched the youth's coat open, and a large number of leaflets cascaded down onto the platform.
Treason, Russell thought. Punishable, like so many things in the Third Reich, by death.
The youth was a head shorter than his captors, with tousled blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked like he belonged in a Grunewald academy for the sons of the privileged. He was no more than seventeen.
The train pulled out. Most of the alighting passengers had disappeared down the stairs, but some, like Russell, were finding it harder to tear themselves away. One leather coat tried an intimidatory stare, and several Reichsbahn officials made coaxing motions towards the exit, but all to little effect. Across the tracks, a large crowd of waiting passengers watched from the other local platform.
The young man shrugged himself free of the one man still holding him. In lunging to refasten his grip, the Gestapo man lost his footing and went down heavily on his back, evoking several cheers from the audience on the opposite platform.
This was too much to bear. As his colleague grabbed the boy, the leather coat pulled a gun from his coat pocket and crashed it into the side of the boy's face. Russell expected the young man to go down, but he was wrong. The boy staggered, but then hurled himself at his attacker, pulling him to the ground. After a second's hesitation, the other two leather coats joined the fray, kicking and punching like men possessed, while the Orpo men just stood there, unable to release their hysterical dogs for fear that they might shred the wrong victim.
Barely a minute or so later, the three Gestapo men were back on their feet, breathing heavily. The young man lay still on the ground, his glasses a few feet away. They looked broken, but just to make sure one of the leather coats ground them under his shoe.
There were no cheers now, only an accusing silence.
A Gestapo man said something to the Orpo officers, who both shrugged their shoulders at him. Russell guessed they had been asked to carry the victim down and were pointing out that someone had to hold the still-slavering dogs. Acting as bearers was obviously beneath the dignity of the Gestapo, who began scanning the platform for likely 'volunteers'.
The young man must have heard it before Russell, the sudden shift of his spread-eagled body anticipating the sounds of the approaching train by a few seconds. As Russell turned to look, it passed the end of the platform, the locomotive steaming furiously, the line of laden flatcars still snaking round the curve above Kantstrasse. Turning back, he found the youth already in motion, running, half stumbling, away from the screaming Gestapo.
Oh no, Russell thought.
The young man ran diagonally across the platform and launched himself into the face of the oncoming locomotive. A silent flurry of limbs, a splash of crimson, and he was gone.
The locomotive thundered by, the unknowing driver on the other side of the cab. The long line of flat-cars rattled through, their draped loads bound for the East and other, less accidental, encounters with death.
The platform was full of stunned faces. Even the dogs seemed shocked.
As the train cleared the platform, Russell found himself drawn to the edge. A headless body was lying between the rails about twenty metres on from where the youth had jumped. The head was nowhere to be seen.
The dogs were whining now, the three leather coats staring down at the mutilated corpse. Even they seemed subdued by the turn of events. Russell was probably imagining it, but their expressions seemed those of children, up early on a Christmas morning, who had just broken a much-anticipated toy.
He turned on his heel and made for the stairway. Half-way down he found one of the leaflets the youth had been distributing. 'In whose name?' was the headline; that of the German people, the text insisted, had been taken in vain.
Too true, Russell thought. But who gave a Fuhrer's fuck for the wishes of the German people?
Back home that evening, Russell listened as Effi recounted her depressing lunch with Zarah, and decided against making things worse by sharing his experience at Zoo Station. Thinking the BBC might raise their spirits, they risked a joint listening session, seats pulled up close beside the wireless. But for once the Oxbridge-vowelled spokesman sounded strangely unsure of himself. They scoured the German wavelengths for some cheerful music, but all they could find were variations of central European gloom. The idea of going out was swiftly abandoned when the rain began beating on the blacked-out windows.
'A day to forget,' Effi said, as they settled for an early night.
Which was easier said than done. As Russell lay there unable to sleep, the train thundered on in his mind.
Next morning at ten, they met Paul at the main entrance to the Friedrichstrasse Station. Since his fourteenth birthday that March, Russell's son had been allowed to navigate his own way across Berlin, and the novelty had obviously not worn off - he clattered down the stairs from the elevated platforms in his
Hitlerjugend
uniform, looking very pleased with himself. Noticing how happy his son was to see Effi, Russell congratulated himself on overcoming her objections to attending. 'Why would I want to stand in the rain for God knows how many hours just to watch some dead Nazi roll by on a flag-covered cart?' had been her first reaction to his suggestion.
The actual ceremony was a bigwigs-only affair - the Fuhrer had apparently arrived overnight from his eastern military headquarters - but thousands of Berliners were thronging the streets, heading for vantage points on the route of the procession. The rain had finally moved on, and the sky in the west showed definite signs of brightening. The wind remained brisk, lifting and shaking the legions of swastikas that flew at half-mast from poles, roofs and facades.
'I thought the Marschall Bridge,' Russell suggested to Paul.
'Good idea,' his son agreed, with the sort of smile that Effi imagined she used on Zarah. Perhaps her sister had a point about families and war.
They walked along the front of the station, crossed over the river, and continued down past the Electricity Works to the Marschall Bridge. A lot of people had had the same idea, but the three of them found a good vantage point on the downstream side, up against one of the parapets.
'The service should be over by now,' Russell said, looking at his watch. The crowd around them was growing by the minute - soldiers, sailors and airmen on leave, bureaucrats in suits and secretaries in high heels, lots of mothers with children, a large sprinkling of older men wearing their Great War medals.
'There are lots of people, aren't there?' Paul said. 'People must have known how good he was.'
'I'm sure they did,' Russell agreed.
He might just as well have disagreed, Effi thought, watching Paul's face. She understood what Russell had meant when he begged her to come. The boy did seem to be looking for a fight, although whether or not he was aware of it was another matter. 'I hear you've been getting yourself into trouble,' she said lightly.
He shrugged. 'Not really.'
'Well, I know how easy it is. I got arrested for making a joke, remember? And I've been really careful ever since.'
'I'll be careful.'
'Promise?' Russell asked playfully.
'Didn't I just say so?'
'Yes...'
'They're coming,' Effi said, hoping that Udet's funeral procession was indeed responsible for the signs of movement on the distant Wilhelmstrasse.