Deadfall in Berlin Read online

  Deadfall In Berlin

  A Novel by

  Robert Alexander

  writing as R.D. Zimmerman

  ScribblePub

  Minneapolis, MN

  the most original of the original™

  Deadfall In Berlin

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2011 by R. D. Zimmerman

  Print Edition Copyright © 1990 by R. D. Zimmerman

  www.robertalexanderbooks.com

  ePub ISBN 978-1-61446-002-2

  MOBI ISBN 978-1-61446-003-9

  Published in the United States of America

  All rights reserved

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the authors or the publisher.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  A writer sits in a corner and makes up things, but in order for a book to work, the story must be credible. With that in mind I'd like to thank Dr. Don Houge, not only for offering his expertise in the field of hypnosis, but for making me so many hypnosis tapes for writing. Peter Petzling generously shared his vast knowledge of German history and his native Berlin, and I'm indebted to him for his help. The very friendly people of Berlin were of great assistance, too, directing me to various archives, various sites, and, among other things, helping me read menus.

  Also, my writing group, The Suspenders, heard every high and low, and offered invaluable advice and friendship. And, of course, thanks to my editor, Susan Schwartz, for the dare.

  For my brothers,

  Chip, Scott, and Jamie

  Deadfall In Berlin

  Chapter 1

  Berlin

  February 1945

  When I heard my mother's scream rise through the ruins of Berlin, I froze in the mountain of rubble that had once been the apartment building where Herr Schulenberg, his wife and children, and seven other families had lived. All that remained was now beneath my feet—bricks, plaster, shattered beams, and buried somewhere below, the two Schulenberg boys who still hadn't been found after one recent night of heavy bombing.

  Standing there in the moonlight—me, blond, blue-eyed, disarming smile, and rather tall for a ten-year-old—I held a bucket of water. I had a helpless, desperate look I could put on in a second and that always worked to my advantage, especially if I smeared my face with dirt. But for once that look was genuine. Fleeing the Gestapo, we'd been in hiding all evening.

  I heard the voice of my mother, the chanteuse, and at first it didn't occur to me that she was begging for her life. I stood there atop the rubble and looked up through the faint light at Frau Schulenberg's piano, which sat on a narrow ledge of what was once the fourth floor. We had an upright like that in the bar Mother operated beneath the charred ruins of our little Berlin Pension. A bar that was in a cellar three levels down and that was almost as safe as the Zoo Bunker and much more popular, for when the bombs started plopping, those in the neighborhood much preferred to smoke and drink and listen to my mother's husky voice than cower in a concrete tomb.

  It was only when Mother's voice shrieked out again that I realized she could be in danger. Just once before had I heard her cry out like that, lungs squeezed, face red, mouth open like a ghoul's. That was when my little brother Erich was killed. Now, fearing the worst, I started to run through the night. We had lived through Hitler and bombs and intrigue and fear. And we were preparing to flee Berlin. Our friends were planning it all. We hoped to leave tomorrow, perhaps even escape all the way to Switzerland.

  “Mama!” I called, hauling the bucket of water.

  I was as adept as a mountain goat at making my way through the ruins, and I clambered down the backside of the rubble, desperate to hear my mother say, “Willi, is that you? No, don't worry, everything's all right.” But she didn't call out, didn't even sing, and I charged through a maze of charred beams and nearly emptied the bucket of precious water as I climbed through a window with no glass. If only I could make it to our little hovel, a secret hole carved in the ruin of a building.

  “Mama!” I shouted.

  She cried in response, her deep, hoarse voice now jagged with fright.

  It was dark and chilly, and I shouldn't have left her alone. I was supposed to protect her, take care of her. But instead of going directly to the broken water main and back, I'd poked into several ruins, scavenged and spied. I must have taken too long, and while I was gone someone must have discovered her, taken her by surprise, and was beating her or stealing our cigarettes or chocolate or coffee. Things we could trade for potatoes.

  I spilled the last of the water, let the pail drop and clang, rushed around the corner. I flew against a sheet of metal that was our door, shoved it aside. Nothing. There was no one in the faint glow of the spirit lamp, just our blankets, a suitcase, and a cigarette. A priceless cigarette smoking on its own.

  “Mama?”

  Charging back outside, I turned right, clambered over a pile of bricks, searched and pleaded. Then in the skeleton of the building next door I spotted something twisting and struggling. It was my mother in the arms of the head Gestapo guy, the one who'd been pursuing us. He glanced at me over his shoulder and laughed, then pulled my mother closer in his arms and kissed her neck. She cried out, rallied somehow at the sight of me, and tried to push that scum of a man away.

  I grabbed a brick and heaved it at that eel. Then I flew at him, me, less than half his size, punching and kicking. He twisted sharply, and I spotted his gun as it tumbled to the ground and clattered on the broken stones. I lunged for it, stretched out my desperate, skinny, little arm but couldn't reach it. The man grabbed me and hurled me through the air and into a wall and I dropped to the ground just like a robin that had slammed into a window. I shook my head, couldn't see. Suddenly I sensed someone else. There was shouting and yelling, and then a huge explosion sent tremors through my heart and shook my entire body. My mother screamed. My eyes opened and I shrieked for sight. I pawed in blindness across the rubble. What was happening? Who else was here?

  “Mama!” I sobbed.

  A second explosion blasted my ears. What was happening, an air raid? Were we being bombed yet again? A man screamed, first low, next long and high like a dog that had been half-smashed by a car. I turned vaguely saw someone holding a gun. The eyes, they were deep and crazy and—

  I scrambled to my feet. We had to get out of here. Little by little my vision was returning, and I scanned that pit of death for my mother, then spotted her for the very last time. She was motionless on the ground, a bullet hole having carved a simple red eye in her forehead. Not far from her lay the Gestapo man, a pile of flesh and bones in a swelling puddle of blood.

  “Ah!” I screamed.

  I wanted to rush to Mother, but I glanced over my shoulder and saw a huge dark figure coming after me, arms outstretched, eyes glaring. I was to be killed, too. That much was clear. Turning to run, I tripped over a brick, clambered back to my feet, and started running. Running. Outside I ducked around a wall, charged on. I twisted around.

  “No!”

  Bursting from the ruins and into the night, this monstrous person clawed out, shouted after me. In the dim light I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. I only knew I'
d be killed if I were caught. Scrambling through the remains of a bank, I didn't know where to go, where to hide, but then the sirens started to cry and moments later came the planes. Hundreds of British bombers swept over the city, dumping destruction upon us. As Berlin exploded, I checked behind me, could no longer see my would-be assailant, and so I dove into some pit and covered my head and opened my mouth, just like I'd been taught. When it was over, when I emerged into the hellish smoke and fire, there was no one around. I wiped away my tears and stumbled on, going and pushing, which was the beginning of my trip to America. A trip that did not include my mother, the chanteuse, for she lay dead like so many others in the ruins of Berlin.

  Chapter 2

  Chicago

  June 1975

  I was staring at a flat white ceiling, had been fixed on it for God knows how long. Finally my eyes drifted to the side and I saw a white formica dresser and my little color portable. On the other wall hung a print of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and a Kandinsky poster. That's right. Chicago. That's where I was. In my one-bedroom apartment not far from Lincoln Park. A little place at the top of a three-flat with lots of white walls and shag carpeting and a good amount of exposed brick and a sleek kitchen. That was why it cost so much. Avocado-colored appliances always jacked up the price.

  I reached over, groped on the bed, touched a plastic box. My tape recorder. Yes, I had listened to my hypnosis tape again. I was scheduled to shoot a commercial tomorrow morning, me as some suburban dad with his son at a ball-game enjoying and sharing a particular brand of wiener—which brand I couldn't just now remember—and I always used hypnosis to step out of myself and into a role. You gotta have a gimmick, and hypnosis was mine. This afternoon, though, I had done something different. I had been about to go under and imagine myself as the ail-American guy, but then I veered. All day I'd been thinking about her voice, that beautiful, smoky, lyrical voice. That was all I wanted. So that's what I'd done. Listened to my induction tape and not pictured myself at Wrigley Field. No. I'd taken myself back.

  But, Christ, no matter how real it felt, despite the salty streaks of dried tears on my cheeks, I hadn't really gone anywhere. I was still here, still in America. I had been brought here thirty years ago, a scrawny little steppke—street urchin—and adopted by a nice man and woman who already had a little girl some five years younger than me. They were all nice, America was nice, our near-north suburb was nice, and I left me, Wilhelm-known-to-everyone-as-Willi Berndt, behind, and became William Walker who, thank God, became not Bill but Will. My mother tongue was forbidden, and I was silent for my first three months. Then I started speaking and I don't think I've shut up since. Forget. Forget.

  I tried to leave Berlin behind. I was happy in the fifties, and Dad and Mom and little sister, Cathy, and I took trips to the Grand Canyon and California. I did what I've always done best: pretended. I smiled and I laughed, and I tried to think of other things as we drove our blue Ford along new concrete roads that were called freeways not Autobahns. I got a dog, had friends, went to school. Never once beat up on my kid sister. War scares me, and in the late fifties one of my first psychologists secured my exemption from the draft. I had seen too much, of that everyone was sure. Later, I embraced the sixties and organized the first demonstrations, dabbled in drugs, and slept with Jean and Susan and Margie and someone I never knew the name of yet who I keep thinking I see on the streets. Going. I kept going. Running. Pushing away. Trying to forget. I became an actor. Did two aspirin commercials, a soap, a handful of sit-coms, but actually I'm not yet the star I thought I'd been ordained to be. Oh, and the up-coming wiener ads.

  I pushed aside the tape recorder, rolled over, and sat on the edge of the bed. Me, Will, forty and here in Chicago. Will, the actor, dark blond hair, balding (just a bit), blue eyes, oval face, broad shoulders. All of that was in this bedroom. How was that possible? How was it possible that I was here when I was so sure I had just been there?

  Everyone except my string of therapists thought I was just Will, kind of handsome and someone who tried so hard, so ridiculously hard, to be nice. Well, it made me want to puke. No matter how nice and sweet (my two least favorite words in the English language) I was, I obviously still couldn't forget. Deep, deep inside me it was all still there. That's why I couldn't go on. I'd tried to leave Berlin behind but it kept creeping back.

  I touched my eyes. I had actually cried. Amazing, I thought, as I rose and headed in the bathroom. I splashed my face, slid back the mirror, then slugged down a couple of aspirins. I was supposed to be good Will, sweet Will, and that was such a burden. Glass of water in hand, I stumbled into my living room, plunked down on my tweedy couch, looked up her number, and dialed.

  “I need to speak to Dr. Brenner,” I said into the phone I tightly clutched. “It's Will Walker calling.”

  In her usual flat, dry voice, the receptionist informed me the doctor was busy, but I insisted. Sounding as unpromising as possible, the guard of the office then parked me on hold. I had to listen to almost an entire string version of “Strawberry Fields” before Alecia picked up.

  “Will,” began my dear doctor, “I'm glad you called. I wanted to talk to you.”

  Not giving her a chance to elaborate—I feared she wanted to change an appointment—I quickly blurted: “I have an emergency.”

  I tried to picture her—long brown hair, thin face, narrow nose, a big warm smile. I was, I knew, in love with her. But I shouldn't be. Big taboo. Alecia was my shrink, and even though I'd had an hour with her just yesterday, I was desperate for another appointment today.

  Her voice came through, deep and concerned. “Is everything all right?”

  “No. I can't remember my mother's voice.”

  “Go on.”

  “She had this dreamy, rather dreary voice that your ears sort of inhaled. While Berlin was crumbling, we were down in the bar. I knew every song she did.”

  Alecia was silent, which didn't really surprise me because I was aware that she thought I was dramatic; in my last session she'd barely batted an eye when I'd told her I thought someone was following me. My present pain, though, was as real as it was awful. I choked, coughed once. This would get her full attention, wouldn't it?

  “My mother died thirty years ago and I can't remember her voice.”

  Alecia cleared her voice. “You can't remember?”

  “No, nothing. Not even a little peep. You see, I was supposed to forget everything. That's why I can't remember how to speak German and that's why I can't remember much about Berlin. But I didn't want to forget my mother's voice. That was all I had of her. Now that's gone too.” I took a deep breath, clutched at my courage. “But I have to remember. Not just Mama's voice. Everything.”

  “And that's what you've been working on,” said Alecia, clicking into her role. “It's going to take some time, but you will get to the point where you'll be able to remember all that you need to. I'm sure of it, Will.”

  I glanced out the window and into the sunny, quiet street. “You know, I've come to realize that forgetting is like lying. It's like a sin of omission.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Truth is like acid. If you hide it inside you, it eats away at you slowly, very slowly. Destroys everything, you know.”

  I told her I'd lain on my bed, flicked on the tape recorder, gotten ready to transport myself to wiener heaven. She understood all that, of course, for it was Alecia's voice on my induction tape; she'd been making tapes for me for over a year now, tailoring trances for specific parts. You know, Matt on one of the soaps. Or Shakespeare, which I did last summer up in Wisconsin.

  Tonight, thought, I'd used just the vanilla-plain induction tape and had slipped into my normally deep state. I was good at hypnosis, maybe because I used my imagination so much in my work, maybe because Alecia had taught me so well. Whatever, I could roll up these blues of mine until there was nothing but the whites, listen to her chant, and POOF. I was gone.

  “So I went back.”
/>   Suddenly I knew I had her full attention.

  Alecia said, “Will, we talked about that. I told you that age regression was something best done only under my supervision.”

  “So I found out.”

  Silence.

  I loved pissing off my shrink. I loved showing her that I had a will of my own, that I wasn't going to do everything when and how she wanted. I didn't want to be her nice little client and do it all her way.

  I gazed at the huge oak out front. “So you want to hear about it or not?”

  Silence.

  She was pissed. She was often quiet when she was mad. Once, though, I had her so steamed she wouldn't shut up. I just laughed. Even back then I wondered if she knew I loved her.

  “So I went back. To Berlin, I mean. It was innocent enough, I suppose.” I explained how I'd been moping around, thinking how the images of my mother had been slipping away, fading like photographs taken out too many times into the light. “Then all of a sudden it just struck me: I had forgotten her voice. It just wouldn't come. My memory was deaf.” I took a deep breath. “So I put on the induction tape and took myself back. Just to hear a song or two. Just to hear the husky voice of my mother, the chanteuse. But I didn't hear a nice…”

  All the muscles in my neck went crooked. I couldn't speak.

  “What did you hear, Will?”

  “My mother's… my mother's scream.”

  My eyes broke. I clutched the phone and suddenly I was sobbing like I hadn't in over thirty years.

  “Will?”

  “It's useless.”

  “Will, what are you trying to say?”