The Girl in Berlin (14 page)

‘I understand you’re a journalist on a roving reporter expedition. You want to write articles about our new West Germany
and particularly the new American-supported economy of West Berlin, the “showcase of the West”. Is that not correct?’

His ironic tone surprised McGovern. He wondered what it meant. It seemed to hint at something: a disavowal of sympathy for the new German state perhaps, a hint he might be on the other side?

‘I can show you something of the new West Berlin. It really is something close to a miracle,’ continued the German, ‘if you remember the blockade in 1948, when we were on our knees. If the Allies hadn’t come to our rescue then – if we hadn’t had the airlift—’ He shook his head. ‘We’d have been finished. As it is, the phoenix has risen from the ashes. So – if you’re agreeable – I thought I might show you some of the sights of the new Berlin, if that suits you, Herr Roberts. Our new Germany. This is what you will require for your articles, I believe.’

McGovern saw no alternative to accepting the offer. They walked out onto the Kurfürstendamm. McGovern’s eyes smarted in the gritty wind that swept down from the cruel white sky.

Dr Hoffmann pointed out the bland modern office buildings along the Kurfürstendamm, with a showy façade of shops and cafés at ground level. Trams clanked past and cyclists flowed by, alongside a surprisingly large number of new and expensive-looking cars. This part of Berlin looked impressively prosperous, compared, thought McGovern, with London, still so shabby six years after the war.

Yet the new prosperity of the Kurfürstendamm was a façade. They walked east, passing the ruined Gedächtniskirche, with its fang-like surviving spire, where glimpses of the mosaics inside could still be seen through the holes in the gaunt remaining walls. On the far side of the road stood men and women in blue capes, who, Dr Hoffmann informed him, were selling tickets for the lottery that would help rebuild the church.

Then, as soon as they left the wide avenue, they found they had wandered into a necropolis. They traversed bleak,
windswept spaces of cleared land, hills of rubble and gaping caves that had once been basements and cellars, alternating with neat piles of bricks where rebuilding was soon to begin. Dr Hoffmann launched them down streets shaded by the shells of buildings with gaps for windows staring sightlessly and walls pockmarked with bullet holes. At one point they passed a whole neo-classical façade that had fallen backwards and reclined, cracked and broken, at a crazy angle. They walked through the battered landscape as if through a dream.

Yet, as over any ruin, moss, grasses, weeds and even pink and purple flowers had grown up to lend a rural air to what must once have been the most urban of cities. McGovern marvelled at how life continued at all costs. And although some of the streets, or what had been streets, were deserted, elsewhere men – many missing a limb, but stumping grimly along nonetheless – and women hurried by through the shattered city, bent on their unknown purposes. He stared at them in fascination. Survival – these people had survived. He sensed none of the humour that was supposed to have helped the British get through the war. It was grim determination that kept them going here. The results of their ruthless resolve were already visible along the Kurfürstendamm and also in the cleared spaces, but most of all it showed in their faces, flinty, pale and obdurate.

Dr Hoffmann led McGovern right to the end of the Western sector. When they stopped he gestured towards the red flag ripped by the wind over the Brandenburger Tor. ‘Here, East meets West.’ He glanced sideways at McGovern. ‘The East Germans are rearming, you know,’ he said suddenly.

McGovern nodded solemnly.

It was a long walk. They retraced their way back through the Tiergarten. ‘You know this was a beautiful place before the war,’ Hoffmann said conversationally. ‘There were trees and shrubs. Now the trees have all gone, as you see.’

McGovern cleared his throat. The pointless pleasantries, which had been going on for over two hours by now, were seriously frustrating him.

‘What work do you do, Herr Dr Hoffmann? If you don’t mind my asking.’

‘I’m a lawyer. I live here in West Berlin – in Charlottenburg to be precise – but I have a legal office in East Berlin. There’s a shortage of lawyers over there. On this side of the great divide we have numerous lawyers from the previous period in our history.’

‘Presumably they’ve all been through the de-Nazification process?’

‘Oh … de-Nazification.’ He paused. ‘That has been rather overtaken by events, I fear. It is more important, as I’m sure you appreciate, Herr Roberts, to ensure that communism does not take hold. Our little island of Western values here is really very fragile.’

‘Of course. But your work, in particular. What exactly is it you do? The legal system there, is it the same? I should have thought it might be rather different. In the East, I mean.’

Dr Hoffmann didn’t answer the question. ‘You shall visit me there, tomorrow perhaps, or the next day.’

‘I’d like that. What kind of law do you specialise in?’

‘It varies. I also act,’ he said with a smile, ‘as a kind of employment exchange. As I said, there’s a shortage of lawyers in the East; I can sometimes create opportunities for those who are willing to work there.’

McGovern did not understand this. ‘So people – Berliners – can move freely between the sectors?’

Again Dr Hoffmann didn’t answer, merely made a vague, expansive gesture. Then he said suddenly: ‘Herr Feierabend tells me you wish to meet the Englishman, Harris.’

At last! McGovern was relieved that Hoffmann had been the first to mention the reason for their meeting.

‘It so happens I am acquainted with him – through his fiancée. I know her father, you see. As a matter of fact, you could meet the young lady. I could take you to lunch where she works. I’m sure she’d be delighted. She’s crazy about all things English.’

‘I’m Scottish, as a matter of fact.’

‘Really? But … well, you live and work in London, I believe. For – which newspaper was it?’

Did the German really not know that he was an agent and not a journalist? Surely he must have been told he was no journalist. Was he simply teasing?

‘The
Scottish Herald
.’

‘Ah yes. Sometimes I imagine the Scots as being a little like the East Germans.’ He laughed at what seemed intended as a witticism.

‘In what way?’

Herr Dr Hoffmann laughed again. ‘Oh, being more socialist, I suppose. But what do you think if we have lunch at, say the Kempinski – yes, I think that would be better and then we can meet Fräulein Schröder later today when she leaves work. If you are free later on, Herr Roberts.’

Did that mean they were to spend the afternoon together? McGovern’s heart sank. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep up the polite façade, when he was so uncertain of Hoffmann’s motives and what the meeting was about, or whether it would actually lead to Harris. But certainly he must accept the offer of an introduction to the fiancée.

McGovern assumed the Kempinski tearooms had been recently rebuilt, but the interior harked back to a time before Weimar, to before the First World War, with its stuffy over-decoration, its red walls and brocaded chairs. They had lunch among prosperous-looking businessmen and a sprinkling of solid, unglamorous women. In a single morning McGovern had already picked up the strange Berlin atmosphere. In the
Kempinski the bonhomie rang false. McGovern looked at the Germans at nearby tables and wondered: where were you in 1945? How did you vote in 1933? How many guilty secrets? How many buried memories? What did you do in the war, Herr Dr Hoffmann? Yet he had the feeling that the Germans were not thinking about the war at all, that they’d buried their memories and forgotten where the corpses were. Yet it was as if the effort of forgetting was itself a heavy burden. That, surely, was what caused this indigestible atmosphere: the wearisome work of repression.

McGovern felt it impossible to bring up the subject of the war directly, and what Hoffmann’s role in it had been. On the other hand, the German was more than ready to describe the hunger years right after the war’s end: ‘Today Berlin looks at least clean. After the war for months, for years even, a grey dust hung over everything, the air itself was grey dust rising from the rubble being frantically cleared; it hung in the air like a kind of visible catarrh. And as you see, in spite of all the clearance, we still have a long way to go. But now since the end of the Blockade, we have a future. Our Mayor, Ernst Reuter, has seen to that. And the Marshall Plan money is helping us so much, of course: the American money that has saved Europe from being entirely overrun by communism.’

Again the mocking tone baffled McGovern. In a curious way it reminded him of Kingdom’s.

Dr Hoffmann accompanied McGovern back to the Hotel Am Zoo. They were to meet again at six. In the meantime McGovern was at a loose end. He found a kiosk in the hotel foyer where Kurt, who said he was the night concierge, sold postcards and American reading matter – Mickey Spillane thrillers and the
New York Herald Tribune
. He was a friendly character and McGovern chatted to him. It was always possible he might turn out to be a useful contact. After listening to an account of the Eastern Front, he chose a postcard of the
Gedächtniskirche, taken before the war. He wrote the postcard to Lily in the lounge and then sat down with
Our Mutual Friend
. Charles Dickens was a great favourite of Lily’s father, but McGovern was finding it heavy going.

At half past six McGovern was standing with Dr Hoffmann across the road from the canteen in the British sector. They waited and watched. The place looked empty and shut.

Then suddenly she was there. She stood on the pavement, which was not really a pavement, and she was one of those tall women with long thighs and a willowy twist to her waist that her faded dress enhanced as it clung to her legs. Her dark hair blew out in the wind and whipped across her face. She was wearing a red cardigan.

They crossed the road. Dr Hoffmann lifted his hat: ‘Fräulein Schröder. How nice to see you – I hoped to catch you as you left work. I want you to meet an English friend of mine, Herr Roberts.’

McGovern also raised his hat. The young woman did not look especially pleased to see Dr Hoffmann.

‘I hope you have time for a drink, Fräulein Schröder. You could even practise your English a little bit.’

She looked doubtfully at the two of them and said in German: ‘I need to get home. I don’t have my bike at the moment.’

‘We’ll see you home safely, don’t you worry. Just a quick drink – I know a bar nearby.’ His arm stretched out behind her in an encircling, avuncular gesture. He led them along the street and soon McGovern realised that they were still quite near the Kurfürstendamm.

The name of the
Lokale
, Chez Ronny, snaked in red neon over the door. Downstairs, tables encircled the small dance floor. A four-piece band was playing ‘In the Mood for Love’,
but no-one was dancing. Dr Hoffmann gestured towards a free table. ‘In the early years after the war this place was a favourite of the English and Americans. As you see, Germans are beginning to be able to afford it now. Some Germans, at least.’ He glanced around complacently. ‘What can I get you?’ And he clicked his fingers at the waiter.

McGovern felt beer would be a safe bet. Frieda Schröder asked for lemonade. The drinks came accompanied by a plate of sliced sausage.

‘I mustn’t stay long.
Der Vater
will be annoyed if I’m late.’ Frieda Schröder looked round the room.

They made stilted conversation. The girl said hardly a word as Dr Hoffmann expanded on the opportunities of postwar Berlin. ‘Herr Roberts lives in London – perhaps he’ll be able to help you when you get there. Tips about renting a flat – I believe you have almost as much of a housing problem as we do?’

‘It’s not anywhere near as bad as here, I’m sure,’ said McGovern. He turned to the girl. ‘You’re living in the Eastern sector, I’m told.’ Not a good ploy; her face was closed in, she didn’t want to talk about it. ‘What can I tell you about London?’ That didn’t work either.

Now the band was playing American jazz. If the customers here were the wealthier Berliners, what must the others be like, McGovern wondered. Like the clientele of the Kempinski tearoom, the drinkers were not badly dressed, but even the smartest looked self-conscious, and a similar air of joylessness hung over the bar. Could the clientele really all be newly successful businessmen and their wives or secretaries? Or was the place floating on black-market money? McGovern suspected it was the latter.

‘I thought it would be a good idea, Fräulein Schröder, to set up a meeting with Herr Roberts and your fiancé now he’s back from London.’

McGovern bit into a piece of sausage. It was extremely salty.

Frieda Schröder sipped her lemonade. ‘That would be good,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but Colin—’ She broke off and stared downwards as if at some mesmerising object on the floor.

‘Colin …?’

‘Oh nothing, Herr Dr Hoffmann.’

Something was wrong, but Hoffmann appeared not to notice her unease, or chose to ignore it. For a girl who was supposed to be so anxious to reach Britain, she was making a good job of concealing it. He was obviously going to have to get her on her own and Hoffmann, perhaps deliberately, had made that possible by taking McGovern to her place of work.

She distrusted Hoffmann; that seemed clear. And who was Hoffmann, anyway? McGovern had so far failed to reach either of the contacts, whose names, real or fictitious, Kingdom had given him. That in itself was worrying. He sat in the smoky bar and tried to act as if he were enjoying himself.

‘What do you say to a drink tomorrow evening? Then we can show you the Eastern sector, Herr Roberts.’

‘I’d like that.’ It was true. He was curious to see the socialist part of Berlin, to meet Harris, but above all to embark properly on his mission.

A frown drew Frieda’s narrow, winged eyebrows together. Beautiful eyebrows, McGovern thought, at one with her pale skin, her mobile mouth. But then she was altogether beautiful.