Feeling hurt and irritated, I jack-knifed out of bed to find my leg buckling beneath me.
'You look fine,' I said wearily, and limped into the kitchen.
'That sounds a little short for a love sonnet,' she called out.
There were some more PX goods on the kitchen table: a couple of cans of soup, a bar of real soap, a few saccharine cards and a packet of condoms.
Still naked, Kirsten followed me into the kitchen and watched me examining her haul. Was it just the one American? Or were there more?
'I see you've been busy again,' I said, picking up the packet of Parisians. 'How many calories are these?'
She laughed behind her hand. 'The manager keeps a load under the counter.' She sat down on a chair. 'I thought it would be nice. You know, it's been quite a while since we did anything.'
She let her thighs yawn as if to let me see a little more of her. 'There's time now, if you want.'
It was quickly done, expedited with an almost professional nonchalance on her part, as if she had been administering an enema. No sooner had I finished than she was heading towards the bathroom with hardly a blush on her cheek, carrying the used Parisian as if it were a dead mouse she had found under the bed.
Half an hour later, dressed and ready to leave for work, she paused in the sitting-room where I had stoked the ashes in the stove and was now adding some more coal. For a moment she watched me bring the fire to life again.
'You're good at that,' she said. I couldn't tell whether any sarcasm was intended. Then she gave me a peremptory kiss and went out.
The morning was colder than a mohel's knife, and I was glad to start the day in a reading library on Hardenbergstrasse. The library assistant was a man with a mouth so badly scarred that it was impossible to say where his lips were until he started to speak.
'No,' he said, in a voice that belonged properly to a sea-lion, 'there are no books about the BDC. But there have been a couple of newspaper articles published in the last few months. One in the Telegraf, I think, and the other in the Military Government Information Bulletin.'
He collected his crutches and shouldered his one-legged way to a cabinet housing a large card-index where, as he had remembered, he found references for both these articles: one, published in the Telegraf in May, an interview with the Centre's commanding officer, a Lieutenant-Colonel Hans W. Helm; the other an account of the Centre's early history, written by a junior staff member in August.
I thanked the assistant, who told me where to find the library's copies of both publications.
'Lucky for you that you came today,' he said. 'I'm travelling to Giessen tomorrow, to have my artificial leg fitted.'
Reading the articles I realized that I had never thought the Americans were capable of such efficiency. Admittedly, there had been a certain amount of luck involved in the accumulation of some of the Centre's documentary collections.
For example, troops of the US Seventh Army had stumbled on the complete Nazi Party membership records at a paper mill near Munich, where they were about to be pulped. But staff at the Centre had set about the creation and organization of the most comprehensive archive, so that it could be determined with complete accuracy exactly who was a Nazi. As well as the NSDAP master files, the Centre included in its collection the NSDAP membership applications, Party correspondence, SS service records, Reich Security Office records, SS racial records, proceedings of the Supreme Party Court and the People's Court everything from the membership files of the National Socialist Schoolteachers'
Organization to a file detailing expulsions from the Hitler Youth.
Another thought occurred to me as I left the library and made my way to the railway station. I would never have believed that the Nazis could have been stupid enough to have recorded their own activities in such comprehensive and incriminating detail.
I left the U-Bahn a stop too early as it turned out at a station in the American sector which, for no reason to do with their occupation of the city, was called Uncle Tom's Hut, and walked down Argentinische Allee.
Surrounded by the tall fir trees of the Grnnewald, and only a short distance from a small lake, the Berlin Documents Centre stood in well-guarded grounds at the end of WasserkSfersteig, a cobblestoned cul-de-sac. Inside a wire fence the Centre comprised a number of buildings, but the main part of the BDC appeared to be a two-storey affair at the end of a raised pathway, painted white and with green shutters on the windows. It was a nice-looking place, although I soon remembered it as the headquarters of the old Forschungsamt the Nazis' telephone-tapping centre.
The soldier at the gatehouse, a big, gap-toothed Negro, eyed me suspiciously as I halted at his checkpoint. He was probably more used to dealing with people in cars, or military vehicles, than with a lone pedestrian.
'What do you want, Fritzy?' he said, clapping his woolly gloves together and stamping his boots to keep warm.
'I was a friend of Captain Linden's,' I said in my halting English. 'I have just heard the terrible news, and I came to say how sorry my wife and I were. He was kind to us both. Gave us PX, you know.' From my pocket I produced the short letter I had composed on the train. 'Perhaps you would be kind enough to deliver this to Colonel Helm.'
The soldier's tone changed immediately.
'Yes sir, I'll give it to him.' He took the letter and regarded it awkwardly.
'Very kind of you to think of him.'
'It is just a few marks, for some flowers,' I said, shaking my head. 'And a card. My wife and I wanted something on Captain Linden's grave. We would go to the funeral if it was in Berlin, but we thought that his family would be taking him home.'
'Well, no, sir,' he said. 'The funeral's in Vienna, this Friday morning. Family wanted it that way. Less trouble than shipping a body all the way home I guess.'
I shrugged. 'For a Berliner that might as well be in America. Travel is not easy these days.' I sighed and glanced at my watch. 'I had better be getting along. I have quite a walk ahead of me.' When I turned to walk away, I groaned, and clutching my knee and affecting a broad grimace, I sat squarely down on the road in front of the barrier, my stick clattering on the cobbles beside me. Quite a performance. The soldier side-stepped his checkpoint.
'Are you all right?' he said, collecting my stick and helping me to my feet.
'A bit of Russian shrapnel. It gives me some trouble now and again. I'll be all right in a minute or two.'
'Hey, come on in to the gatehouse and sit down for a couple of minutes.' He led me round the barrier and through the little door of his hut.
'Thank you. It is very kind of you.'
'Kind, nothing. Any friend of Captain Linden's '
I sat down heavily and rubbed my almost painless knee. 'Did you know him well?'
'Me, I'm just a Pfc. I can't say I knew him, but I used to drive him now and again.'
I smiled and shook my head. 'Could you speak more slowly please? My English is not so good.'
'I drove him now and again,' the soldier said more loudly, and he imitated the action of turning a steering-wheel. 'You say that he gave you PX?'
'Yes, he was very kind.'
'Yeah, that sounds like Linden. Always had plenty of PX to give away.' He paused as a thought occurred to him. 'There was one particular couple well, he was like a son to them. Always taking them Care packages. Perhaps you know them. The Drexlers?'