Stattin Station (6 page)
'More than likely.'
'And there's no end in sight is there? It's all gone downhill in a few months. Victory after victory for two years and suddenly we're holding our breath. I was looking down the ward this evening and thinking that these are the casualties of success - what on earth is failure going to look like?'
'We'll know in the next few weeks. Whether or not he's failed, I mean. It's impossible to tell at the moment. We don't know how much the Soviets have left, or how quickly the winter will set in. One interesting thing I heard today - the weather's already turned in Siberia, so the Soviets are safe from the Japs until spring. That's a lot of men they can bring west.' 'Hmmm. How was your day?'
Russell took the loaded plate across to the table, placed it between them, and handed her a fork. 'The usual rubbish.' He told her about the press conference, and offered an edited version of his meeting with Dallin - despite precautions, they were never completely sure that the Gestapo hadn't managed to plant a microphone. 'Then I went to see
Homecoming
,' he admitted.
'Oh, did you?'
'You were really good.'
'I know.'
'And that makes you feel bad.'
She gave him a wry smile. 'Of course. It makes me feel part of it. Just like the boys I talk to, gunning down Jews. I'm sure they're good at their job too.'
'It's not the same,' Russell said, and it wasn't. Not completely.
'Isn't it? It feels like it is. I'm not doing another film like that, John. I'd rather quit.'
'Would they let you?'
'I think so,' she said, for the first time considering the possibility that they wouldn't.
'What would you do?' Russell asked.
'I've no idea,' Effi said getting up. She walked through into the living room, and a few seconds later the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra were easing into 'I'll never smile again'.
She reappeared in the archway. 'Come dance with me.'
'Lunch at the Adlon?' Ralph Morrison asked, as he and Russell reached the pavement outside the Foreign Ministry. It was a miserable day, a thin mist of rain hanging in the air.
'Why not?' These days most Americans were
persona non grata
in most of Berlin, but the Adlon Hotel remained a welcome exception.
'Another hour I'll never get back,' Morrison complained, as they walked up Wilhelmstrasse. 'I even found myself missing that bastard Schmidt this morning. At least he lies with some panache. That idiot Stumm, well, what can you say?'
'If they really have taken Kerch, that's bad news,' Russell said. 'Puts them too damn close to the Caucasus oilfields.'
'I know.'
'Did you get any more on Udet? None of my contacts would tell me anything.'
'Oh yes. He shot himself all right. And left a note blaming Goering - "Oh Iron Man, why have you deserted me?" or some such rubbish. Why do fighter aces never grow up?'
They reached the Adlon entrance and walked through to the restaurant. Gestapo technicians had invaded the hotel a few months earlier and planted hidden microphones everywhere, but over the intervening weeks most had been discovered by the staff, and the guests discreetly warned. Morrison and Russell headed for an area of the large room that was generally considered safe. There was no chandelier directly above their table, and the latter's underside was clear.
Russell had got to know Morrison quite well since his arrival some six months before, as Jack Slaney's replacement. A burly Mid-Westerner in his mid-thirties, Morrison had arrived knowing little about Germany, but he had inherited most of Slaney's excellent sources, and proved a quick learner. If he sometimes appeared even more cynical than his predecessor, that was probably because reporting from Berlin no longer bore any relation to traditional journalism.
The ritual with scissors and ration tickets completed, the two men sipped at what passed for beers in Hitler's triumphant capital. 'I did pick up another story in my trawling,' Russell admitted. 'I was talking to a German friend this morning, a journalist. Apparently the editors of all the big city dailies were called in to Promi yesterday, and told to lay off the winter clothing story. The official line is that it's all waiting at the railheads for distribution, but the trains are in chaos so who knows when they'll get there, and they're worried that the troops will write home and tell their families that nothing's arrived and they're all freezing to death. So no one's supposed to mention the subject, and there's a complete ban on pictures of soldiers in their summer uniforms.' Russell laughed. 'Photographers have been sending back too many pictures of Red Army men in thick coats guarded by shivering Germans in denim.'
Morrison shook his head in amazement. 'Have they really been that incompetent?'
'You bet. The astonishing thing is that they're still advancing. Stalin must be matching them balls-up for balls-up.'
Their lunch arrived, boiled cabbage and potatoes with a few suspicious-looking pieces of sausage. If this was what the Adlon was serving, God help the rest of the Reich.
'The thing about the Nazis,' Russell went on, 'is that everything's short term. They gabble on about thousand-year Reichs but they don't do any real planning. There's a fascinating article in the
Frankfurter Zeitung
this morning about the importance of infantry in the Russian campaign. Well, it's not fascinating in itself, but the fact of it is. An article like that would have been inconceivable a couple of months ago - all anyone wanted to talk about were the panzers and the Luftwaffe. Short-term weapons, weapons that win quickly,
blitzkrieg
. And I think that whoever wrote that article has realised that
blitzkrieg
has failed in Russia, that only the infantry can win it for them now.'
'Do they have the infantry?'
Russell shrugged. 'My guess would be not, but that may be wishful thinking.'
As he ate, another likely consequence of the German emphasis on tanks and tank-supportive planes occurred to him. If German production had all been geared to
blitzkrieg
over the last few years, there was no chance of Hitler having a fleet of long-range bombers up his sleeve. Russell could understand why Dallin and his Washington bosses were worried: their country was accustomed to immunity from such threats, and the appearance of German bombers in the skies above Manhattan would certainly wreak havoc in the American psyche. But there was no substance to this particular piece of paranoia, and nothing to be gained from his seeking out Franz Knieriem.
Nothing for the Americans, that was. He might earn himself a few points by showing willing. He could at least find out whether the man was still living at the same address - there was no risk in that. And there was always the chance that Knieriem had moved, which would give him grounds for further procrastination. If his luck was really in, the address was now a bomb site.
The slivers of sausage actually tasted quite good, unlike the cabbage and potatoes which tasted of salt and little else.
A waiter materialised at his elbow. 'A call for you, sir,' he said. 'In reception.'
It was his ex-wife Ilse. 'You always told me I could reach you there,' she said, 'but I never quite believed it.'
'Now you know.'
'It's Paul,' she told him. 'He's said something he shouldn't have at school, and...'
'What did he say?'
'I don't know. I'll find out when he gets home. But they want to see his parents, and Matthias is in Hannover.' Paul's stepfather, a thoroughly respectable German businessman, usually acted
in loco parentis
where the authorities were concerned. 'I'd rather not go alone,' Ilse added.
'What time?' Russell asked.
'Six o'clock. Say half past five here.'
'I'll be there.'
'Thanks.'
Russell replaced the earpiece. Another missed press conference performance at Promi, he thought. Another silver lining. But what about the cloud - what had Paul been saying?
Russell left plenty of time for the endless ride out to Grunewald, but one tram broke down and the driver of the next seemed unwilling to risk a speed of more than ten kilometres an hour. Getting round the city grew more frustrating by the day, except for those with the right connections. Arriving ten minutes late at the Gehrts' house, he found Matthias's Horch staring out of an open garage door, its numberplate adorned with the priceless red square which allowed its owner the luxury of continuing use. Russell felt like unscrewing the numberplate there and then, but a written permit was also required.
Ilse opened the door before he had time to ring the bell. She looked worried.
'Well?' Russell asked. 'What's it all about?'
'Two jokes, and one was about Hitler. Paul should know better.'
'Where is he?'
'In his room.'
Russell climbed the stairs, wondering what sort of reception he was going to get. Over the last few months his fourteen-year-old son had seemed increasingly exasperated with him, as if Russell just didn't get it - whatever
it
was. Ilse thought it age-related, but the boy didn't seem to behave the same way with her or his stepfather, and Russell knew that his being English, and the complications which that had necessarily caused in Paul's German life, had more than a little to do with their recent difficulties. But there was nothing Russell could do about that. 'It's like your snoring,' Effi had told him when they talked about it. 'I want to murder you, and knowing you can't help it makes it even worse. I can't even blame you.'
He crossed the large landing, and put his head around Paul's half-open door. His son was doing his homework, tracing one of the maps in his Stieler's Atlas. 'Another fine mess you've got yourself into,' Russell observed. Paul loved Laurel and Hardy.
'What are
you
doing here?' Paul exclaimed. 'If you go to the school, it'll makes things worse.'
Russell sat down on the bed. 'They know you have an English father, Paul. It won't be news.'
'Yes, but...'
'What were the jokes?'
'They were just jokes.'
'Jokes are sometimes important.'
'Well I can't see that these two were. All right, I'll tell you. Describe the perfect German.' Russell had heard this one, but let Paul supply the punchline - 'Someone blond as Hitler, slim as Goering and tall as Goebbels.'
Russell smiled. 'You forgot clever as Ley and sane as Hess. What was the other?'
'One man says: "When the war's over I'm going to do a bicycle tour of the Reich." His friend replies: "So what will you do after lunch?"'
Russell laughed. 'That's a good one.'
'Yes, but it's just a silly joke. I don't really think we'll lose the war. It's just a joke.'
'They'll call it defeatism. And the first joke - these people take their racial stereotypes seriously. And they don't like being mocked.'
'But everyone tells jokes like those.'
'I know.'
'John, we have to go,' Ilse called from downstairs.
'Coming,' he shouted back. As he got up he noticed the picture of Udet on the wall, alongside Molders and the U-boat ace Gunther Prien. 'It was sad what happened to Udet,' he said.
Paul looked at him disbelievingly. 'You didn't like him.'
Russell had no memory of saying so to his son, but he probably had. 'He was a wonderful pilot,' he said weakly.
'I want to see the funeral march on Saturday,' Paul insisted.
'Fine,' Russell agreed. 'I'll check the route.'
He kissed his son's head, and went back down to Ilse. 'We just nod our heads and look humble,' she told him as they started down the street towards the school. 'No arguments, no smart replies. And no jokes.'
'You'll be saying he gets it from me next.'
'Well he does, doesn't he? But I'm not blaming you. I like it that he doesn't believe most of what they tell him.'
'What does Matthias think?'
'He's angry. But then these days he's angry about anything that reminds him of the government we've got. He'd rather just wake up when it's all over.'
It was the first time Russell had ever heard his ex-wife criticise her current husband, and he felt rather ashamed of enjoying the moment.
They walked through the school doors and down the corridor to Paul's classroom, where his teacher, a grey-haired man in his fifties or sixties, was marking a pile of exercise books. A large map of the western Soviet Union adorned one wall, complete with arrows depicting German advances. Russell wondered if the teacher knew that he and Ilse had met in Moscow, two young and eager communists out to change the world. No jokes, he reminded himself.
The teacher's name was Weber. He proved stern and apparently humourless, but also surprisingly reasonable. It turned out that one boy had repeated Paul's jokes to his own parents, and the father had turned up at the school in a rage that morning. The boy had not named Paul as the source, but once the matter had been discussed in class, Paul had privately informed Herr Weber of his guilt. The teacher had no intention of divulging Paul's name to the complaining parent, a man, he implied, who was somewhat over-zealous in ideological matters. Paul had an excellent record in the
Jungvolk
, Herr Weber went on, and had started out well in the
Hitlerjugend
, but, like many spirited boys of his age, he clearly felt the urge to test the boundaries of what was permissible. Which was all perfectly normal. But in days like these, such testing could have disproportionate consequences, and it was highly advisable for both teachers and parents to clarify those boundaries wherever they could.
Ilse and Russell agreed that it was.
Herr Weber gave them one wintry smile, and thanked them for coming in.
It was gone seven when Russell reached the Halensee Ringbahn station, and dense layers of cloud hid the moon and stars, promising one of the deeper blackouts. Accidents were common on the S-Bahn in such conditions, with passengers opening doors and stepping out onto what they mistakenly hoped was a platform.
Russell got off to change at Westkreuz, and stood on the Stadtbahn platform in the near complete darkness for what seemed like ages, listening to the murmur of invisible people and watching the patchwork of glows as passengers on the opposite platform dragged on their cigarettes. He would be arriving late at the Blumenthals, not that it mattered Jews were not allowed out after 8pm, which certainly simplified the task of finding them at home. Especially now that their telephones had all been disconnected.
The Blumenthals were one of several Jewish families that he - and often Effi as well - visited on a fairly regular basis. At first this had been work-inspired, part of Russell's attempt to keep track of what was happening to Berlin's Jewish community as the war went on. It quickly became clear that they could also help in many ways, some small, others increasingly significant. Ration tickets could be passed on, and news of the outside world did something to lessen the sense of helplessness and isolation which many Jews now felt. There was also the sense, for him and for Effi, that they were keeping the doors of their own world open, refusing to be trapped in what a German colleague had once called 'the majority ghetto'. And some of the Jews had become friends, insofar as true friendship was possible in such artificially skewed relationships.
A train finally rattled in behind its thin blue light, and Russell had no trouble finding a seat in a barely-lit carriage. Several Jews were standing together at one end of the carriage, presumably on their way home from a ten-hour shift at Siemens. They were not talking to each other, and he could almost feel their determination not to be noticed.
Leaving Borse Station, he picked a path up the wide Oranienburgerstrasse with the help of the whitened kerbs and an occasional tram. The Blumenthals - Martin, Leonore and their daughter Ali - had a small two-room apartment in one of the narrow streets behind the burnt-out ruins of the New Synagogue. This was reasonably spacious by current standards, but something of a come-down for the family, who had once owned a large house in Grunewald and several shops selling musical scores and instruments. Martin now worked in a factory out near the Central Stockyards, cutting and treating railway sleepers. He was the same age as the century, a year younger than Russell, but he looked considerably older. Hook-nosed and with protuberant lips, he looked like a caricature
Der Sturmer
Jew; by contrast, his wife Leonore was simply dark-haired and petite, while his seventeen year-old daughter Ali, with her fair hair and green eyes, could have passed an audition for Tristan's Isolde.