She registered what went on around her in the next few hours: the arrival of the red hordes under a fat little captain who watched what his soldiers were doing with approval and had the youngest girls brought to him: the screams of the raped women and beaten men: the senseless slaughter of horses and cattle. She registered it but did not really take it in. She and Lina made huge pans of soup in the kitchen for the victors, and that preserved her from the worst for the moment, but she cherished no illusions about the future.
As she was carrying a soup pan out to the men round their fire, Jurek grabbed her. He had been drinking with the soldiers. 'Come here, German whore!' he bellowed, dragging Detta away from the fire into the dark. His breath smelled of vodka. He let go of her behind the stables. 'You scream so they think I kill you,' he whispered.
Detta screamed until her throat hurt.
'I saddled Loschek. Get away quick, right?'
He had tied a blanket on the old horse's back with a girth. He helped her up. The night was cold and starry once again. She orientated herself by the Great Bear. Berlin, here I come, she thought. I'm repeating myself, she realized bitterly.
The Berlin city commandant looked up from his desk. 'Good morning, Curt.'
'Good morning, sir.' Curtis S. Chalford indicated his companion. 'Sir, this is Henriette von Aichborn.'
The general shook hands with Detta. 'Glad to meet you, Miss von Aichborn. I am Henry Abbot. We're all here to find out whether you'd like to become my German liaison.' Abbot was a lean, grey-haired man with a weathered face. He had the clipped, dry accent typical of New England aristocracy. Detta liked him at once, and the feeling seemed to be reciprocated.
'That's entirely up to you, General Abbot. But why don't we give it a try?' she said.
A trial period, excellent,' Chalford agreed. Detta had gone to see him at the German-American Employment office, and he had suggested her for the post — the applicant spoke fluent English, was a real lady, and had that certain something that you couldn't learn but were born with.
Detta would have taken almost any job. She wanted just one thing — to immerse herself in work and to forget it all; her wild flight from Aichborn, first on horseback and then on foot, after hungry, homeless people had killed the old nag. She had hidden from the marauding liberators in the undergrowth or in barns by day, taking remote paths through the woods and fields by night, then spent the following weeks with the Glasers in Mahlow on the outskirts of Berlin — the fact that a woman Red Army major was billeted on them meant that they escaped the worst. News came from the faithful Bensing, by roundabout ways, that her mother had been released, but her father was in the NKVD camp at Buchenwald.
After the Western Allies had entered the capital, Detta ventured to the Steubenplatz, which was in the British sector. Her apartment was occupied. A family who had survived the trek from East Prussia had been quartered there. She was able to retrieve a few things from her wardrobe, though where she would take them she didn't know.
At the Housing Department, where she stood in line for hours on end, someone spoke to her. 'It's Fraulein von Aichborn, isn't it?' The woman wore a once elegant, foal-skin coat and a headscarf. 'Elisabeth Mohr. You visited us once at Horn's fashion house on the Kurfdrstendamm, with Fraulein Goldberg. It must have been in about 1935.'
'Frau Mohr, yes, I remember.'
Frau Mohr had to give up a room in her apartment. 'I'd rather find a tenant for myself than have someone billeted on me.' So Detta and her few things found a place to live in Waltraudstrasse on the Fischtal park, and had the benefit of Frau Mohr's good advice, too. 'If you speak any English, you could try getting work with the Yanks. They pay in Allimarks, but most important of all, they give you something to eat.'
And now she was in the process of taking up one of the most important posts open to a German at this time: advising the US city commandant and liaising between him and the people of Berlin. But she felt no pleasure or satisfaction. She felt empty and alone.
The arrival of her mother was an unexpected gleam of light. The Baroness had made her way to Berlin on foot and on the roofs of overcrowded freight trains. Fanselow and his Red friends were ravaging Aichborn. They had looted the schloss and expropriated the land.
The Baroness smiled painfully. 'Bensing had to go through a session of self-criticism as a "minion of the Junkers". He insisted on staying. Someone must be at Aichborn when Father comes home, he says. Oh, Detta, I have so little hope. I hear that conditions in the camp at Buchenwald are even worse under our new masters than before.'
From then on mother and daughter shared the same bed. Frau von Aichborn was not a refugee and had no right to accommodation in Berlin. She lived like a shadow, spending her days reading or going for long walks in the Fischtal. A pretty park,' she said. 'Did you know that the name Fischtal has nothing to do with fish? The farmers of Zehlendorf used to call the pastures there the "Viehstall", the "cowshed". A man out walking told me that.'
She revived when she was allowed to start teaching a Spanish course at a new adult education centre. And she was finally allotted a room too, in the basement of a villa in Katharinenstrasse, quite close to Detta. A photograph on the chest of drawers showed the Baron in gumboots inspecting a breeding bull. Both the Baron and the bull looked happy.
The way to work wasn't far: over the Waltraudbriicke to Argentinische Allee and then to Oskar-Helene-Heim U-Bahn station. Opposite stood the buildings of what had been the Luftgaukommando, which the Americans had made their Berlin headquarters, and by virtue of their liking for absurd acronyms called oMGUS, 'Office of the Military Government of the United States'. The sandstone facades of the Third Reich were intact and the same as ever. The smell of Nescafe and Virginia cigarettes in the polished corridors was new.
Detta went that way every day, and every day the blind man met her. He was a youngish man, small, with dark glasses and a white stick, wearing a uniform mended in several places and bearing the outline of a Luftwaffe eagle that had been removed from its breast. She supposed he lived somewhere nearby.
She felt sorry for him. But it would have gone no further — she was in no mood to make new acquaintances — if he hadn't almost walked into the path of a car one morning. She grabbed his sleeve and held him back. He was alarmed, then understood and thanked her. 'I know you. I know your footsteps. We meet here every morning, don't we? I'm taking my daily constitutional, so as not to get old before my time.'
'Come on.' Detta took his arm and led him across the street. 'Have a good morning,' she wished him on the other side. He walked away, his footsteps sure. He obviously knew every paving stone.
Her new daily routine began as she showed her pass to the guard at the entrance. Lieutenant Anny Randolph, personal assistant to the city commandant, was waiting for her in the outer office with a black coffee. It had taken a little while for Detta to get used to it: the Americans boiled their coffee instead of brewing it. 'Hi, Detta, how are you this morning?'
'Thanks, Anny, swell,' said Detta, imitating the lively New Yorker's speech. 'What's on?'
'The boss wants to see you. The people wanting a newspaper licence have an appointment at eleven.'