Fresh snow had fallen, giving the area something of a Christmassy look. The fir trees in the park were dusted white. Ice crystals glittered in the late afternoon sun. Children slid down the slope on their toboggans, squealing. A lad of fifteen in the uniform of a 'Luftwaffe auxiliary' passed them on one ski. He had turned up his empty trouser leg.
The sun sank red in the haze. It promised to be a bright, cold night. The three women walked faster. Freezing, Jutta pulled the fur close around her. 'We'll soon warm up at home. I have a little coke left in the cellar.'
An organ rang out from the church by the U-Bahn station. Professor Heit- mann was playing Bach. The interior of the brick building was crammed. Held, the sexton, had opened the main door wide so that those left outside could share the service and the organ music. Pastor Gess was preaching the Christmas sermon. The birth of Our Lord was an innocuous subject: even the Gestapo spy in the third pew couldn't find anything objectionable in it.
Now it was winter Jutta didn't go to the trouble of taking the blackout paper off the windows when she left the apartment in the morning, so she could switch the light on as soon as she got in without having the air-raid warden yell, 'Lights out!' She opened the flap of the boiler in the kitchen and poured in plenty of coke. 'We won't be mean with it today.'
A cherry brandy to warm us up? Find me some glasses, Jutta.' Anja poured the liqueur.
Jutta raised her glass to the others, and turned on the oven. Then they prepared the goose, peeled apples and potatoes, and cut up the red cabbage, which was simmered with the remnants of some bacon rind.
The candles in the living room were generally used as emergency lighting when the power was off. Jutta held a fir twig in their flames. The sharp scent of its ethereal oil had something festive about it, and soon mingled with the smell of the roast. Anja poured more cherry brandy, and Jutta retreated into Jochen's armchair with her glass. She wanted to be by herself for a moment. Then the telephone rang. It was her father with good wishes for Christmas, asking if she wouldn't come round to them. 'It's not seven yet, and you could be in Kopenick at nine if there isn't an air raid.'
'I have visitors here, and a goose in the oven. We're going to drink your burgundy. Happy Christmas, and to Mother too.' She hung up before her mother could take the receiver. She couldn't bear her mournful remarks just now.
Anja was looking at the photograph of the 1938 class expedition beside the balcony door. 'He was good-looking, your husband. Do you miss him very much?'
'It's all so long ago.' She didn't want to talk about it.
'Shall we sacrifice a little of the wine for the gravy?' Diana changed the subject, guessing how she must feel.
'I still have a stock cube. We can dissolve it in boiling water and use that.'
The goose was tough and had no flavour. The red cabbage tasted considerably better. Jutta had put a few cloves in it. 'Happy Christmas,' she toasted the other two.
'Same to you,' said Anja cheerfully.
They enjoyed the full red burgundy and chewed the goose with resignation. 'Could have been worse,' Diana comforted her fellow diners. They had ginger biscuits and coffee for dessert. Jutta switched on the People's Radio, and then switched it off again. The Vienna Boys' Choir singing 'Silent Night' was just too much. Instead, she wound up the portable gramophone and brought some long-forgotten records out of the bookcase. She put on a Charleston and danced skilfully through the room with it. Anja followed her example. Diana watched, smiling. When the gramophone played a tango she took Jutta in her arms and led her through the steps.
They drank cherry brandy, and became cheerful. Anja had found a record of Don Cossack music, and did a Cossack dance with her knees bent. And after that, at the Princess's, there was vodka and caviar and lots of Russian soul stuff,' she remembered.
'We don't plan to hang around for any of that this time,' said Diana, turning to Jutta. Anja and I are going to Hesse tomorrow. My brother has a farm there. We'd rather be at the American end when they roll in. Why not come with us?'
'I can't leave my parents on their own.'
'If you feel like carrying on with the bookshop.'Diana Gerold put the keys on the table.
The candles had burned down, the bottle of cherry brandy was empty. Christmas was over. Jutta switched the ceiling light on. It had a sobering effect. 'I'll make up the bed for you two, and I'll sleep on the couch.'
'There's room in the bed for three,' said Diana.
Jutta lay there between the two friends, abandoning herself to their gentle caresses, but she felt lonelier than she had ever been.
One bright February night in early 1945, hundreds of British Lancaster bombers carried out an air raid on Berlin, killing several thousand women, children and old men. His Britannic Majesty's Air Marshal Arthur'Bomber' Harris was rehearsing for Dresden.
The firestorm swept through the ruins of Berlin Mitte. Those who were not vaporized in the heat were torn apart by bombs. In the cellar of Number 47 Wilskistrasse, the inferno sounded like a distant earthquake. Suppose it came closer? Fear knotted Jutta's stomach. Frau Reiche from the first floor left was clinging to a bag containing the family papers. Frau Fritz from next door held her two small children in her arms. Lieutenant Kolbe, first floor on the right, came down the cellar steps. In civilian life he was an architect, and he was now on leave. 'This you have to see. Come on up with me. It's all quiet outside.' His wife fearfully shook her head.
Jutta plucked up courage. The sky in the east was pulsating and blood red. To the north, the velvety, black sky was a background for the bright 'Christmas trees', the light markings set by pilot planes. Kolbe lit a cigarette. 'They're sparing the suburbs. They don't want to destroy their own future quarters.' He threw the cigarette away and took Jutta by the hips. 'A little quickie standing here? Just to cheer us up?' His prick pressed against her thigh.
'Please don't, Herr Kolbe.'
'My wife puts it about more generously than that. I suppose you know better than I do how many uniformed visitors she has. Makes you glad to get back to the Front.'
'I don't know what you're talking about.' Jutta freed herself and went back down to the cellar. She could have spared herself the journey. The siren on the roof opposite sounded the all clear.
Her apartment was cold and inhospitable. The coal merchant had held out the prospect of a few briquettes at the weekend, but she hated standing in line almost as much as she hated shivering in a strange cellar if the alarm sounded for an air raid while she was there. She switched on the lamp. It flickered a couple of times and went out. Power cut.
Luckily the water in the electric storage tank was still warm. She took a candle into the bathroom and ran the tub full. The hot water warmed her freezing body and gave her a feeling of safety. She wrapped herself in a big bath towel and went to bed. I'll open the bookshop again tomorrow, she thought as she went to sleep, but she knew that she wouldn't.
Spring arrived, and with it the hesitant green of the acacia trees, and mild temperatures. The people in the cellar of Number 47 Wilskistrasse were frozen, but with fear rather than cold. They were eating potatoes left behind by a fellow tenant who had long ago fled to the country. Herr von Hanke, a cultivated man of seventy, always with a tie and a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, divided them up. 'Please, dear lady, be reasonable,' he told old Frau Mobich. 'Who knows how long they'll have to last?'
'But I'm so dreadfully hungry,' sobbed the old lady. Jutta gave her a few potatoes from her own ration. They cooked the tubers on a burner they had found in her locker in the cellar along with a few sticks of white coal. Mementoes of those Bohemian days in the railway car with Jochen.