“Yes, but now here. Brecht needs me here, so I came.”
Martin lifted his head at this.
“I’m sorry,” Alex said, introducing them. “Ruth Berlau, Martin-”
“Schramm. Martin Schramm.” He dipped his head.
“Ruth is Brecht’s assistant,” Alex said, smiling. “Right hand. Collaborator.” Mistress. He remembered the teary afternoons at Salka’s house on Mabery Road, worn down by a backstairs life.
“His secretary,” Ruth said to Martin, correcting Alex but flattered.
“I’m a great admirer of Herr Brecht’s work,” Martin said, almost clicking his heels, a courtier.
“So is he,” Ruth said, deadpan, so that Alex wasn’t sure he could laugh.
She seemed smaller, more fragile, as if the hospital had drawn some force out of her.
“You’re staying here?” he said.
“Yes, just down the hall. From Bert.”
Not mentioning Helene Weigel, his wife, down the hall with him, the geography of infidelity. He imagined the women passing in the lobby, eyeing each other, years of it now.
“Of course a smaller room. Not like the great artist’s.” An ironic smile, used to servants’ quarters. “They’re going to give him a theater, you know. Isn’t it wonderful? All his plays, whatever he decides. We’re doing Mother Courage first. At the Deutsches Theater. He was hoping for the Schiff, but not yet, maybe later. But the Deutsches is good, the acoustics-”
“Who’s playing Courage?”
“Helene,” she said simply. Now finally Brecht’s star as well as his wife. Alex thought of the wasted years of exile, keeping house for him, ignoring the mistress, an actress without her language. “You’ll have to come to the theater. She’ll be pleased to see you again. You know Schulberg is here?” Wanting to gossip, California in common. She jerked her head. “In the army. Over in the West. Which is lucky for us. Food packages from the PX-he’s very generous.” Alex felt Martin shift position, uncomfortable. “Not for Bert, of course. They give him anything he wants. But for the cast, always hungry. So Helene gets food for them. Imagine what they would say if they knew they were flying in food for Weigel?” She looked up at him, as if the thought had jogged her memory. “So tell me, what happened with the committee? Did you testify?”
“No.”
“But there was a subpoena?” Asking something else.
Alex nodded.
“So,” she said, taking in the lobby, his presence explained. “Then you can’t go back.” Something else remembered, glancing behind him. “Marjorie’s not with you?”
Alex shook his head. “She’s getting a divorce.” He raised his hand. “We should have done it years ago.”
“But what happens to Peter? The way you are with him-”
“He’ll come visit,” Alex said, stopping her.
“But he stays with her,” she said, not letting go.
“Well, with the way things are-”
“You like a fugitive, you mean. That’s what they want-hound us all like fugitives. Only Bert was too clever for them. Did you see? No one understood anything he said. Dummkopfs. And what? They thanked him for his testimony. Only he could do that. Outfox them.”
“But he left anyway.” His bridges burning too. “So now we’re both here,” Alex said, looking at her.
“We’re so happy to have our writers back,” Martin said before she could answer. “A wonderful thing, yes? To be in your own country. Your own language. Think what that means for a writer.”
Ruth looked up at this, then retreated, like a timid animal poking its head through the bushes then skittering away, frightened by the scent in the air.
“Yes, and here I am talking and you want to go to your room.” She put her hand on Alex’s arm. “So come see us.” But who exactly? Brecht and Ruth or all three? A hopeless tangle. She smiled shyly. “He’s happy here, you know. The theater. A German audience. That’s everything for him.” Her eyes shining a little now, an acolyte’s pleasure. The same look, oddly, he’d seen in Martin’s, both in thrall to some idea that seemed worth a sacrifice.
“I will,” he said, then noticed the overnight bag at her feet. “But you’re going away?”
“No, no, just to Leipzig. They want to put on Galileo. Bert doesn’t think they’re serious, but someone has to go. One day, two maybe. It’s all right, they keep my room for me here. You can’t make such arrangements by letter. You have to go.” So someone would.
The room, on the third floor, still had blackout curtains hanging heavily to the floor, and the bellboy, barely in his teens, made an elaborate show of drawing them, then demonstrating the light switches, the candle and matches, in case of power cuts. He nodded to the luggage rack with its single suitcase.
“Are you expecting more bags?”
“Not tonight. In a few days.” The rest of his life, sitting somewhere on a railway siding, waiting for the new flat to be ready. But why wasn’t it? It occurred to him, now that he’d seen the city, that flats must be prizes awarded by the Party. It wasn’t ready because someone was still in it, packing, being shuffled off somewhere else, the way Jews had been told to leave.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” A bottle from the cellar, a girl, a bellboy’s usual late night services, but offered now without innuendo, vice out of style in the workers’ state, the boy himself too young to know the old code. Maybe one of the boys defending the city with panzerfausts during the last days. Now waiting for a tip.
“Oh,” Alex said, picking up one of the envelopes from Martin, his walking-around money. He handed a note to the boy.
“Excuse me, perhaps you have Western currency?” Then, almost stammering, “I mean, you are coming from there.”
“Sorry. I came through Prague. No West marks. Just these.”
The boy looked at him. “Not marks. Do you have a dollar?”
Alex stopped, surprised. The contact line, sooner than he expected. Not even a day to settle in. The boy was still staring at him. Speaking code after all, a new vice, not too young for this. Or was Alex imagining it all?
He took out his wallet and handed the boy the folded dollar bill, watching as the boy looked at it, then handed it back.
“You are from Berlin? From before?”
Alex nodded.
“Naturally you would be interested to see your old home? A matter of curiosity. It’s often the first thing people want to do. Who’ve been away.”
“Lützowplatz,” Alex said, waiting.
Now the boy nodded. “In the West,” he said, already another city in his mind. “You can walk there. Through the park. In the morning.” Instructions. “Early. Before eight, if you would be up.”
“There’s no trouble crossing?”
The boy looked puzzled for a second. “Trouble? To walk in the Tiergarten?”
“At the sector crossing.”
The boy almost smiled. “It’s a street only. Sometimes they stop a car. To inspect for the black market. But not someone who walks in the park.” He paused. “Early,” he said again. “So, now good night.” He held out his hand. “Excuse me. The East marks? Since you don’t have West? Vielen Dank,” he said, palming the note and backing toward the door, a practiced move, part of the Adlon touch. But did he have any idea what he’d done? Just delivering a message, pocketing a tip, no questions asked. Or something more, already part of it?
Alex took off his coat and lay on the bed, too tired to get undressed, staring at the dim chandelier overhead. They’d told him the most likely places for bugs were telephones and lighting fixtures. Had the chandelier been listening? He thought over everything the boy had said, how it would sound. But what could be more innocent than a walk in the park?
In the silence he could hear the planes again, muffled, as if he were listening from below in one of the hotel shelters. Some of the guests would have been in furs, not wanting to lose them if their rooms disappeared by the time the all clear sounded. Could you actually hear fire, flames licking at walls just overhead? Then the shelter became the cell in Oranienburg, not the barracks, the interrogation cell, airless, the old nightmare, and he willed his eyes open, short of breath, and went over to the windows.