Deadfall in Berlin Page 13

  “Jew faces,” he said, smiling.

  That's what they wanted and that's what he painted. Canvas after canvas, Jew face after Jew face, so he could stay alive, eat, sleep. Canvases that became posters that were plastered all over town screaming RECOGNIZE THE ENEMY! THIS IS THE ETERNAL JEW! STOP THE CONNIVING JEWS! Hundreds of paintings later, he went crazy, left a note that he was hurling himself into the Wannsee (also letting it be known that he couldn't swim), and escaped over a wall and ran and ran and walked and stumbled and came down with a terrible fever and bumped right into the big chest of Loremarie who had bought several pieces from Anton's father. HELP! he had begged of her. Help she had given.

  “I've been buried here two and a half years,” he laughed. “I only go out at night, and then only during the raids when all good Germans should be tucked in their shelters.”

  Loremarie beamed: “But we're going to make it! We're going to make it!

  Anton laughed. “You, an American!” He waltzed his thin figure over to Joe and kissed his hand. “The war will be over in a matter of weeks.”

  “Let's hope so.”

  “Anton, what about the travel documents?” I asked. “Are they ready yet?”

  “Almost, my little friend. Once I've finished carving the authorization stamp it will look perfectly legitimate. I'll be done soon.”

  Yes. Before the Russians. Before… I was suddenly nervous. I looked into Anton's face, a visage that had remained happy, smiling, full of hope down here without the sunshine. And I was afraid. The road to the end of the war was still to be built over the bodies of millions of yet-to-be-killed people. Which ones of us would be among those? If only I could see the future, anticipate it and save us all.

  “Willi, there's nothing you can do to alter the course of fate.”

  “But first we have to get Joe some identification papers,” said Loremarie. “We can't have him getting shot as a spy.”

  No, that wouldn't do. Not Joe.

  “And,” Anton said, “we have to bandage him up some—make him look wounded. Loremarie, you and Willi can do that. We can't have him getting strung up as a deserter.”

  No. That wouldn't do, either.

  “Yeah, we can make him look real wounded,” I said with a grin. Lots of blood and goop. “Come over here, Joe.”

  As if he were merely a mannequin, I shoved Joe past gray stone, cold, dismal walls, past a big dented tea pot, then plunked him down on a three-legged stool. I found myself staring at this man, who maybe was my father, while Loremarie fished for materials, Behind us in this hidden tomb, Anton the Painter a.k.a. Forger, studied Joe's face, then set to work.

  “The best we could get you,” he began, talking over his shoulder, “would be a Kennkarte, the national identity card. But that would take time. For now… for now… a baptism certificate—I'll make sure it's from a church that's been destroyed—a few ration cards, a priority card, a bombed-out certificate, and something from the Volkssturm. Ja, ja, that would be good. You can be some governmental so-and-so whose offices were bombed and then moved to the country. But you stayed on and you're not a soldier, but some organizer in the civilian army.”

  He rattled on as if he were a grocer checking a list. Sped up, spun around. Creativity in a hailstorm. He sorted through one stack of papers—had he printed all those?—found one, pulled it, inspected it, then started down another pile. He withdrew a pen as if it were a scalpel, mumbled something about how Joe would need a photograph for this and that card and that Eva could see to it tomorrow but today, today, well, at least this was a start. If he were stopped at least it wouldn't be as obvious as a yellow star.

  I found myself noticing the tiny bed by one wall, the huge map of Berlin hanging on the other. The radio.

  Joe saw what I was looking at, and asked, “Anton, do you listen to the radio much?”

  “Of course he does,” I volunteered. “Anton knows everything.”

  Anton laughed. “Well, little one, maybe not everything. But everyday I listen to our news, the BBC, and all the music I can.”

  “And the bombs,” laughed Loremarie.

  Anton, she explained, spent his time cheering on the Allied bombers, listening to military broadcasts for their positions, and pinpointing their attacks on the large wall map. Anything that fell on the Tiergarten was from the ghost of his father. Anything that fell on Alexanderplatz was a gift from his mother, for she had liked to shop there. And any destruction on the western part, well, that was from his sister, for she had loved the lakes and parks. Yes, he said. They were dead. He was sure of it. When he'd first heard of the gassings he knew, felt, smelled it. He was all that was left.

  Loremarie nodded, pulled out a role of gauze, and said, “Willi, let's use this to do something nasty.”

  Joe groaned as Loremarie wrapped a white turban around and around his head, swooping it just over his left eye. Then she took out some eosin and artistically dabbed it all around.

  “Do a big blob above his ear,” I eagerly said. “You know, like he has a real disgusting shrapnel wound. And… and put some on his pants, too!”

  “Gee, thanks kid,” said Joe, peering out from under his disguise. “Am I going to be able to walk after this?”

  “A cane!” I cried. “He needs a cane!”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Loremarie said, “He's right, Joe. I've got one upstairs. You should take it and walk with a limp so that it looks like there's no way you could be at the front.”

  Loremarie and I stepped back and admired the eosin, which was drying a deep, convincing red.

  “It looks like he's really been blasted,” I said, pleased.

  Anton looked over. “]a, das ist sehr gut.” Yes, that's very good.

  “So Anton,” began Joe, fiddling with the gauze, “if you're such a master falsifier, why can't you just write yourself a ticket out of here?”

  Returning to his work, he laughed. “Go on, show him, Loremarie.”

  Loremarie scuttled over to a cabinet. She flung open its door, fiddled around, checked something, rejected it, then found two large pieces of paper. Ja, ja, ja. She laughed, drew them out. Two posters branded with the Star of David and a face that was hauntingly familiar. A face that was long and drawn, dark hair, dark beard. Even though the smile was absent and the beard added, this person was easily recognized.

  “That's Anton,” I said.

  Joe nodded in surprise. “Of course it is.”

  “They told me to paint Jew faces,” said Anton, still huddled over his table. “I lied and said I had no idea what a Jew looked like. They beat me. I told them I still didn't know whether a face looked Jewish or not. So they got smart and shoved the brushes at me: paint your face or die. What? Paint your face, they said. You have a typical Jew face. So I painted poor miserable me. Again and again. They liked it. I hated it. Hated myself for what I was doing, the lies my image was helping to spread across Europe. Ja, ja, every Jew face in every Nazi poster was based on…”He glanced over at us. “On my face. Right cheek. Straight on. Left profile. Growling, laughing. Cheating. Not only did I do posters, but I did caricatures of myself for the hardline Nazi paper, Der Stürmer.”

  I'd seen my Anton, the man who'd fed Erich and me with color, plastered on buildings everywhere. The lines and curves, eyes and nose of this man, drawn and painted, stretched and ridiculed over and over, turned into posters hung all across the Reich, all across conquered Europe, printed in a newspaper that was distributed to every hate-loving fascist.

  Loremarie beamed: “After our dear Adolf, my Anton is the most recognized man in the Vaterland!”

  He laughed, somehow having forgiven himself, somehow having found the energy to move on. “If I were to stroll the Ku-damm people would stop and stare, then pounce on me. If I were to go for coffee at the Cafe Kranzler—that is, what remains of it—my table would be surrounded.”

  Yes. Surrounded by SS or Gestapo not asking for autographs, but offering a free cattle car ticket to the east. That's why
he couldn't go out.

  Anton shrugged. “And if the officials by chance didn't get me, the ‘catchers’ would.”

  Catchers, he explained, were the Jews who worked for the Gestapo. Jews who sank beneath Berlin and identified other U-boats and turned them in. Jews who paid for their lives with the lives of others. But that didn't surprise me. Everyone was desperate.

  “I've thought about disguises, but even if people didn't recognize me as the Evil Jew they'd seen plastered everywhere, then they'd probably just notice a Jew in hiding. Because…” He smiled. “Because after all, this face is very Semitic. Even my own mother—may she rest in peace—said, ‘Oi, Anton, yours is a shayna Yiddusha punim.’ A beautiful Jewish face.”

  Loremarie poured us hot ersatz something-that-was-dark-and-bitter, and we watched Anton finish his work. All the while my mind churned. Couldn't we come up with a temporary disguise for Anton that would last long enough to get him out of Berlin? Perhaps a wounded soldier, his face all battered and shattered and bandaged? Yes, someone terribly hurt fleeing to the countryside.

  Anton said: “We couldn't have survived without Eva. She can get anything on the black market, and she gets enough for us, too. Without her I'd be dead. Ach. What a wonder worker she is. Of course, I supply her with a bundle of forged ration cards and anything else she needs, but Eva sees that Loremarie and I eat better than any other Berliners!” He sighed. “Hopefully I'll be able to get her and Erich and our little Willi here out of town.”

  I sucked in gloomy air, glanced around at the little underground room, nodded and nodded as Loremarie went on about how all Germans weren't bad Germans. I watched Anton as he peeled a real hard-cooked egg and picked off every microscopic bit of shell, then rolled the baby-bottom smooth thing over an original stamp—picking up nicely the red ink—then gently rolled the egg over some papers. The result: counterfeit documents with an official stamp.

  “It looks perfect,” I said, looking over his arm.

  “It is perfect,” retorted Anton.

  Something went cuckoo-cuckoo, and I looked over on the wall and saw rough stone and on that an incredibly elaborate wooden clock with a little tweet that chirped the hour. Something frivolous saved, remounted down in this artistic dungeon.

  “Willi, you and Joe should be going,” said Loremarie. “We don't want to keep your mother waiting.”

  Heaven forbid, I thought.

  Looking at Joe pensively, she added, “I think I should come with you. If there's any problem, I can claim Joe is my husband.”

  With a twinkle in his eye, Anton said, “Be very, very careful with her, Mister. No funny stuff. I want her back, you know.” He held out several cards and a folded piece of paper. “Here's a baptism certificate, some ration cards, and a couple of other things. Be sure to hang on to the bombed-out certificate—that's a good one.”

  “Thanks Anton,” said Joe, accepting them. “Thanks very much.”

  “You bring great joy to me. The first American, which means the end is near. Thank God! You must come back and we can discuss the future of Germany. The Allies must nurture us after the war, you know. Nurture us with freedom and democracy, inspire us. Otherwise, Bolshevism will flood into the craters left from the war and fill people's minds.”

  Joe said, “They say it's going to take at least until the end of the century to rebuild Europe. The engineers say it will take forty or fifty years just to cart away all the rubble. So there's plenty to be done.”

  Yes, I thought, clutching my Joe by the arm, I was almost happy because the end was near. The Good Guys were on the way.

  “Your stamp for Switzerland—when will it be ready?” Joe asked.

  “In a couple of days. I need a special ink.”

  I yanked on Joe's arm. “But that's not soon enough!”

  Joe glanced down at me, then up at Anton, and said, “Willi's right. If we're going to make it out of here, we don't have much time.”

  I knew tomorrow's forecast. I sensed it: clear skies. Sunny day and moon-dripped night. Perfect weather for that horribly perfect, all-destructive raid. Then suddenly in a rush of fear, I wondered why we should even bother running from here. We might be able to escape Berlin. We might be able to flee into the future and to a distant time and place, but I knew I'd never be free. I would always be running, always looking over my shoulder and back into my memory because someone or something would always be hunting me. I imagined myself a grown man, chased through a city with tall buildings, and dodging tank-sized cars and steel-wheeled trains. My heart churned. It was useless. There was no getting away. There never would be. No safe place. Ever.

  “No, Willi, there will be. If you keep going toward the truth, you'll discover who's after you, and that knowledge will give you the strength to find peace as well as safety.”

  Snapping me back to here and now, Loremarie said, “Come on, we haven't any time to waste.”

  We didn't, of course, and without another word, Loremarie and I led Joe up and out of one of Berlin's secrets and toward another.

  Chapter 15

  Loremarie hunted out the cane for Joe, and we headed off, cutting through the Tiergarten district, past continual ruins and continual people trying to pretend it was a normal day. Past people pushing, pulling carts of every kind; carts that held precious belongings that they would try and push and pull into the countryside and away from the bombs. I glanced at destroyed buildings, saw chalk messages scribbled on the facades: “Hans, I'm alive and staying with Friedel! Love, Gretta.” And: “Momma, where are you? Fritz.” And: “I've taken the girls and we've gone to the country. We are all safe and healthy, Sigi.” I smelled frying potatoes and onions, and spotted a woman cooking in the shadows of a blasted building that had no front or roof. The Red Army was so close yet life was going on.

  Loremarie, Joe, and I came to Tauentzienstrasse, turned right, and up ahead I saw the battered figure of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche, the memorial church. The towers somehow still remained, but the roof of the church was gone, consumed by fire. Loremarie, her ample figure bundied up in a singed gray fox coat—she'd been caught out in a firestorm—led us down a sidewalk, and then down a narrow trail carved between a row of boarded shops and a line of debris. Above hung a whole row of square balconies, or what remained of them. On the street: few cars. A dreadfully skinny horse pulling a wagon. A mother and two children, all carrying bundles. All fleeing from the east.

  Joe nudged me, and keeping his voice low, asked “Willi, what's the central district like?”

  “Really blasted. They bomb it almost every night.”

  “Ja, ja, ja” added Loremarie. “Most of the governmental buildings have been destroyed. The museums and palaces as well.”

  Silent, we trudged on, past the Gloria-Palast, circled the island that the memorial church still struggled to occupy, looked toward the even-in-ruins-fashionable Ku-damm. Traipsed over streetcar tracks.

  “My God,” said Joe at the horror around us, “Eva brought me here before. It…it was so beautiful.”

  “Really?” I asked because I had so little memory of Berlin without ruins.

  “Oh,” said Loremarie, sadly, “it was so wonderful. The Tiergarten and the Brandenburg Gate and Unter den Linden.”

  How could I? This was my world, one vast exploding and crumbling one.

  I whispered, “Hitler's in his bunker, Joe. He has this huge underground bunker and they say he never comes out anymore.”

  Suddenly Loremarie commanded: “Limp, Joe. Limp!”

  Cane in hand, Joe twisted and bobbed as four large army trucks rumbled past, weary soldiers loaded in the back. Not one of them looked in our direction, however, even spite of Joe's weird gyrations.

  Once they'd passed, I said, “Erich's going to have to give you lessons. You're walking like you've got an acorn in your shoe.”

  But he didn't respond. Rather, his eyes were fixed far to the right, on a shattered pile of stones crumbling over the remains of two prone carved elephants.
>
  “The Elephant Gate. Eva and I had our photograph taken there,” he mumbled.

  Glancing at that and the charred shell of the Aquarium, I shrugged, for now it was difficult to imagine it otherwise. Pressing on—we were to meet Mother and Erich on the other side of the zoo—we started down Hardenbergstrasse, the Bahnhof Zoo visible in the distance.

  A woman passed, and her eyes stuck to Joe, searching, wondering what was wrong with this picture. An old man's brow puckered as he walked by.

  I asked, “Do you think people think Joe's really wounded?”

  “Ja, ja, natürlich, the blood on the head bandage is perfect,” stated Loremarie as she steered us around a deep dish in the ground that a lone bomb had scooped out. “Believe me, I've gotten hundreds out of Berlin by making them look wounded.”

  Something hooted, and we all looked to our right and through a hollowed building, straining to see into the zoo and spot what God-forsaken creature had survived thus far.

  Joe said, “Jesus, the zoo's been wiped out.”

  “It was bombed by an entire convoy of British planes,” I said. “You should have seen the flames!”

  “Oh,” moaned Loremarie, “it was awful.”

  As we walked along, I recounted the night more than a year ago when the Brits had been off target, thought they were striking some industrial plant. One thousand incendiary bombs had hit the zoo, all within fifteen minutes. There was a huge, horrible firestorm, I told Joe. You could hear the shrieks of lions and elephants, tigers, monkeys, as they were roasted in their cages. A few were fortunate enough to escape through shattered walls, only to be later hunted down in the Tiergarten by a squadron of crack soldiers. That's when the Aquarium had been blown to bits.

  “They say it rained snakes and alligators for a whole half hour,” I concluded.