Deadfall in Berlin Page 17

  Joe snapped, “It was you, Dieter, wasn't it, who called the Gestapo here?”

  Dieter lifted his fists and smiled and nodded. “I want you dead before you can hurt us.”

  Joe hurled himself up and off the floor. Threw himself and his anger at Dieter, tackling the one-legged man. They rolled across the floor, slamming into a bench and toppling it over.

  All of a sudden some huge force barreled behind me. Screamed: “Stop it! Stop it!”

  Loremarie plowed me aside, rushed toward them. That there was a war here, now, was far more than she could comprehend. “I've always hated you!” shouted Dieter as he swung at Joe.

  Loremarie grabbed him by the back of his shirt, and screamed, “Nee!”

  Her great body dove downward, rammed them. She was far stronger than I would have thought, and she started wrestling them apart.

  “Get out of the way!” shouted Joe at her.

  “Stop it, stop it right now!”

  Dieter: “I'll kill him!”

  Loremarie dropped herself between them, but Joe kept trying to swing. Dieter shouted his anger—about his leg, his parents who'd been blasted and burned in Hamburg and—

  “Eva! Willi!” shouted Loremarie, still trying to hold them apart. “Come here! Help me!”

  I turned. Mother! Mother? She wasn't there, wasn't right behind me watching from the sidelines. Wasn't by the bar or sitting at a table, either. My heart thumped, then took off. Her coat and hat were missing. At once I raced over to the bottom of the stairwell. A ball of cool air came rolling down, washing me with its chill. My mother, I knew, had escaped, gone off in search of drink.

  Chapter 19

  Unnoticed, I abandoned the arguing mass of voices and fists, grabbed my own jacket, and bounded up those curling stairs. Shoving open the oak door at the top, I ran out, through the courtyard, through the ruins of the Pension. I squinted in the sun. Which way? She couldn't have gone more than a block or two. But which block?

  I'd find her. I had to. I cut to the right. Ran over rubble. Sped down a path that some tidy neighbor had swept of debris from the last raid. Would sweep again and again until Germany was back on its feet. And then sweep more. I pushed through the chilly, late winter day. The sun was big and bold, like the moon would be tonight. Was there any hope left, any chance of getting out of Berlin? No. I had to accept that.

  There were only a few people out. All women except for a few old men. Some soldiers. But no Mother in her wool coat and fur-trimmed hat. With Erich no longer slowing her, she was moving quickly. Or had I gone entirely in the wrong direction? I came to a corner. Turned around. Yes. I had to go back in the other—

  Wait. There she was, weaving quickly through debris, one tipsy foot after the other. So she wasn't so fast. Not really. I started running forward, ready to call out to her, ready to try and bring her back, but then I slowed, reining myself to a stop. It struck me that Mother was stumbling toward the answer to a long-pressing question. Yes, I wanted to know, had to know, who was supplying her with alcohol. Was it the man with the swarthy aura and the fist full of American dollars? Or was it the man in the long car with the chauffeur and the flapping door? A surge of angry curiosity came rushing out of nowhere, flooding the street, pulling me, dragging me into the shadows. I wasn't going to call after her. Of course not. No, I'd tail my mother, follow her to this, the most secret piece of her life.

  “And what will you learn, Willi?”

  Something terrible. That was what lay at the other end of her trek.

  “Be more specific”

  I nearly tripped over it. I was about to learn what kept Mother here, why she felt she could survive nowhere but in a place that was dying. And that's what I really needed to know, too: why she'd never wanted to leave Berlin. To see that truth, to find something so hidden, I had to be sharp. An excellent observer. Then with that knowledge maybe we could get her to leave.

  I shrank to the side of the street, drew myself behind a pile of brick, and played my mother out like a fish on a line. Give her space, I thought, let her roam, and she won't know she's already been snagged. I let her go another twenty paces, then started off, determined to discover where Mother was swimming in this sea of debris.

  Up a street, around a corner. She moved on, her step more sober and confident with each moment. I didn't know where she was headed, of course, except that it was north. Again toward the Tiergarten district with its smashed expensive houses and flats and diplomatic missions. She shied away from the broad Potsdamerstrasse, actually headed more to the west, which relieved me because the main Gestapo headquarters were more to the east, not far from Potsdamerplatz. So that was good. That would mean, I hoped, that whomever she was involved with would more than likely be a government official or diplomat or perhaps someone rich and noble. Not the keepers of the horror.

  I followed my mother through nothing but ruins, entire blocks that had been bombed and burned over and over again. Across a once grand avenue, a crowd of old men and young boys was overturning the shell of a streetcar; they then started filling it with bricks and other rubble. Somehow this and other haphazard barricades sprouting everywhere were supposed to stop the Russians, who had pushed and shoved and marauded all the way from Moscow, across the steppes, through Poland and into Germany.

  Berlin was but a facade. That was all that was left. The interior of almost every building had been hollowed out, and all that was left were these grand though heavily damaged exteriors. Pockmarked, skeletal dowagers, that's what they were. Everywhere hung ornate balconies with no apartments behind them. Huge, arching windows that were glassless as well as meaningless because there were no roofs and there were no floors or homes on the inside. On and on. Four, five, and six-story buildings that clung precipitously to one another because there was nothing inside to support them.

  So it was a mask, this whole place. And now I understood why Hitler hadn't already surrendered, why he hadn't called a truce before the final and worst damage was done to the heart of Germany. This was a pretend city. Pretend it still existed. Pretend there was a secret weapon. Pretend there was still a chance of victory.

  Mother disappeared around a corner. I hurried to the edge of a building, peered around. She was picking her way down the middle of a narrow street, and I'd gone but a few feet when I heard the deep growl of an engine. Slowly making its way toward us, lumbering over this and that from last night's raid, rolled a huge feldgrau army truck. Mother clambered to the side and out of the way of the huge open vehicle that was blooming with helmets and rifles. Quickly I slipped into a narrow alley. I was her son and I was smart. Easily as clever as her. I wouldn't let myself be seen.

  Down at the other end of the narrow passage, only some twenty meters away, lay a dead horse. At the rear of the creature stood an old man, hearty but easily in his eighties, entirely bald and wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and a fine dark suit. He looked like a retired professor or doctor, and he stood there, a large knife in his hand, staring at me. I nodded politely at him, he returned the greeting as if we were taking torte and coffee at some Konditorei, and then continued carving the hind quarters of the horse.

  The rumbling of the truck began to fade, and I checked, found the truck had passed and my mother was moving on. Ever my mother's tail, I passed onto a larger street and into a stream of people. This was some main thoroughfare, wider and more clear of debris, and Mother continued up it, then turned at the first corner.

  Sensing she was near the end of her journey, I darted in and out of the throng, slowed at the edge of the block, and observed her approaching a medium-sized building. Occupying one side of a small, open square, this place was very official and not at all friendly looking, all its windows filled in with sandbags. Battered, too. Huge divots had been chipped from its stone walls, and about half of it was tinged black from nearby fires. So, I realized, somehow this building had so far escaped the heavy bombing dropped on this area. And this was where Mother's keeper of the cognac worked. Yes, and this
miracle man, her angel of the Reich who had safeguarded her for so long, most certainly was not the same man I'd seen passing Mother the American dollars. No, this guy was big, someone who dealt in blocks of gold, not in bundles of American dollars.

  I watched as Mother mounted the building's wide staircase, as she knocked on its heavy door, as she disappeared inside. Suspecting it wouldn't be long for a single bottle, I made my way closer, over some recently charred boards, and into a demolished bakery. My nose twitched. Everything was deathly fresh. A fire, perhaps as recent as yesterday's bombings.

  Stepping over the remains of a display case, I got a better view of the plaza and the dominating office or government or diplomatic or whatever it was building. Next to it I saw the shell of a long car, undoubtedly once shiny and elegant, but now torched and horrible. Tires melted. Paint fried away. Interior roasted. Of course I couldn't be sure, but as a ghost of its former self, it certainly resembled the one with the flapping door. The one at the zoo. Perhaps, quite possibly, that person and his driver had made it all the way back here before the car was caught in the fire. Then again, this could be another car altogether. There were hundreds like it littering Berlin.

  I leaned against a wall and wished I had some of Loremarie's potatoes or coffee. Across the street I saw a tattered sign whose headline read: Soldaten der Armee Wenck! Then a big line at the bottom ordered: Berlin kapituliert nie vor dem Bolschewismus! So, I thought, Berlin wouldn't capitulate, particularly not to the Bolsheviks. But it wouldn't be saved, either. Joe was right. I knew it now. There was no secret anything. Nothing to save us. All of Germany was about to be crushed, and Berlin, the heart of it all, would get it the worst. These years of bombing had only been the appetizer.

  I heard steps, looked over to the building and saw two men in leather coats emerge. I started trembling, from the cold as much as the sight of the leather. Only the most powerful men in Berlin dressed like that. Mother, Mother, I thought, what place is this? And what are you doing in there, who are you seeing? My blood began to thin, race through my body as I imagined every hideous possibility.

  My feet began to ache from the cold. Staring the entire time out a big hole that had once been a large window, I stomped on the rattly floor of the burned bakery. Finally, I saw the door of the mausoleumlike building crack, then open. All-smiles-Mother stepped out. I knew that face, that my-charm-wins-all look of victory, and in one hand I saw her clutching her flask surely refilled with cognac, and in the other the neck of a bottle. I didn't know if Mother thought herself beautiful, but she was a master at using what God-given attributes she had. She was a make-up artist, able to apply charm like cosmetics to achieve stunning results. And once again she had succeeded.

  Mother spoke to someone still inside, reached in, pecked the unseen person on the cheek. No. Rather, she gave a full, lengthy kiss. And I turned away. I wondered what it was like to grow up in a place where you could sleep in a bed above ground, where the loudest noise you'd ever hear would be your very own alarm clock. I wondered what it was like in America. That's where I wanted to go. That's where I would go if the war ever ended. If I lived that long. America. It sounded like a dream. I tried to imagine myself in a time of peace, but could not.

  I stayed hidden in the shell of the bakery, watched from the charcoal shadows as my mother slipped her flask into her coat pocket, then descended the stairs of that building, crossed the square and came closer and closer to me. So now I knew where her protector roosted, though I didn't know what he did. Unfortunately, it didn't even occur to me to wait, to simply follow Mother back to our bunker bar and corner her there. This secret she'd kept from me for years, and I had to know it all now, that very moment, despite the horrible consequences.

  “Hallo, Mama,” I called softly from the innards of the bakery.

  I liked her reaction. Shot with disbelief, she turned in the street as if she'd heard an angel, then looked at me standing there as if I were the devil. Face bursting red, melting to white.

  “Willi!” she gasped. Immediately she looked back at the building. “Mein Gott!”

  At once it was apparent how dangerous situation this could be, and each second things became still more clear, for those big dark eyes of hers telegraphed an even deeper secret to me. It was so simple that it hadn't ever crossed my mind before—this was why our little bar had never been closed. My stomach tightening and shrinking, I stood reading the truth at last so clearly exposed on my mother's face. Liquor was never free, and now during the war it was even more expensive. And Mother had been paying its hefty price all along. I thought back to all those who frequented our little bunker bar, to those not of pure Nazi thought like that lady who'd spouted off and then disappeared just last week. For years now Mother had been offering plentiful drink and singing racy songs, creating an atmosphere of loose lips. So what had she learned? How many had she turned in? Of those, how many were left alive?

  Clutching a brown boozy bottle under her arm, Mother stumbled toward me, through a hole, over bricks. Eyes seething, she came at me. Someone had caught her. And that someone was her own son. But would I tell Dieter, Loremarie, others? Even I didn't know.

  “Come on, we've got to get out of here!”

  “You're a Spitzel, aren't you?” A snitch. An information whore. I stood in shock. Me, just a kid, but knowing there was nothing worse. My very own mother. “He's Gestapo, isn't he?”

  “Don't!”

  Don't ask, she was saying. So that meant, of course, he was a man of power. So much power it was better not to know. Which in turn meant he was indeed one of the ruthless ones. With a snap of his finger he could liquidate Mother and me and Dieter and Loremarie and, of course, Joe.

  “The bar hasn't been closed because of him, right?”

  My very own horrible mother moved yet closer to me, saying, “Ja, of course, but… but don't you understand?” She shook her head, pulled at her hair. “Scheisse, at first he threatened to send me off to a labor camp, and then what would have happened to you and Erich? Later he was the one who saved both of you, too!”

  “But…”

  “I had no choice, Willi!” she pleaded. “He's kept us alive!”

  Disgusted, I turned from her. I quickly tallied up everything, and Mother lost. I wanted her out of my life.

  “Willi!”

  I had to get away. Escape this crazy world. I didn't know how I'd do it, where I'd go. But I had to. I had to leave my own mother, my own city. Escape. Perhaps Joe would come with me. Perhaps Loremarie and Anton, too. Standing there in the remains of some strange bakery, it was odd how adult I felt.

  “Mama, I want to leave Berlin.”

  Mother reached over and ran her hand through my hair. “You're right, Willi. We'll all go. I'll—”

  “Nee!” I twisted away, wanted no part of her.

  “But Willichen, you need the passes.” She curled her voice, smoothed it nice and sweet. “I'm sure Anton's finished them and they look wonderful. We can get everything from Anton, and then leave!”

  Spearing our argument was a dry snap of wood, a branch-like cracking as if we were in the woods and some unseen person had just revealed himself. Immediately, Mother and I fell silent, turned. Searched the bakery shop ruins for a spy. And there he was, quite confidently revealing himself as he stepped from the street and into the building. Altogether nicely dressed in a shiny leather coat and dark slacks, and holding a pistol in his gloved hand. I found myself staring at those leathery fingers gripping that gun. Yes, that was the hand I'd seen cupping my mother's breast outside the zoo.

  Mother gasped, said, “Heinrich, I… I…”

  And that was a man I'd seen before. My entire being jolted with shock.

  “Passes?” he said. “Eva, my dear, you never said anything about wanting to leave me. And who's this Anton?”

  Never could I forget him, this man with the narrow face and long nose and pale skin and hair. I couldn't forget him because he was an eel incarnate. This was the very man who had s
ent those two thugs down into the bar, searching for Joe. The one we'd later spied on the street and who Joe had seemed to recognize. The one who'd had a death squad waiting for Joe and me. My heart sputtered like a flak-hit bomber desperately trying not to crash. Did this mean that Deiter, who'd brought the Gestapo running, was in on Mother's Spitzel work as well?

  “You've been keeping some secrets from me, haven't you, Evchen? You know how I feel about that. It's certainly not part of our agreement.” He casually lifted the pistol, flaunted its barrel at her head. “Leaving? You wouldn't betray the Vaterland, would you, by running away at so crucial a moment?”

  “Please, Heinrich, I can explain!”

  “Oh, I should like that.”

  I was numb with disgust and hatred for my own mother. She'd abandoned Erich at the zoo to go embrace this man who'd nearly had Joe and me killed. Anger rushed through me, caused every part of me to burn and shake.

  He spread a slime of a grin on that face. “Hallo, Willi. Your mother's talked all about you. You're quite the delivery boy, aren't you?

  On impulse, he squeezed the trigger of his gun, and a bullet went whizzing past me and zinged against something metal. Mother screamed and dropped her precious bottle of brandy. Heinrich stood there, quite complacent, and I locked up my fear, called on all my strength to merely blink at the shot.

  “Maybe there's something you'd like to tell me, Willi?” he said. “Such as, who else your dear mother's been seeing and where this Anton is obtaining transit passes?”

  Mother was crying. Her eyes lifted, met mine, and I saw they were filled with tears of shame. As we teetered on the edge of disaster, her integrity stood naked in front of me, and she knew as well as I that it was slovenly and disgusting.