The policeman pushed him away from the door. “Shut up. Idiot. He’s von Bernuth.”
Alex closed the door, bolting it, then waved to the maid. “The drapes. Every window.”
The room itself seemed to exhale, everyone stuck in place for a moment, listening for sounds outside.
Alex went over to Fritz. “Thank you. For saying that.”
Fritz looked at him, a quick nod, then, confused by the intimacy, moved away. “Such things. In Germany.”
“Oh God,” Irene said, suddenly frantic, moving the presents and opening the closet door. “Help me.”
“Are they gone?” Erich said, nose still bleeding. He slid out, pulling Kurt with him. “Now do you see?” he said to Fritz.
Fritz said nothing, his body slack.
“Here, let me,” Irene said, moving into Erich’s place, cradling Kurt’s head in her lap. “Where’s the water?” Dabbing at his head with her handkerchief to stanch the blood around the cut.
“Careful. You’ll get blood on your dress,” Elsbeth said.
“Oh, my dress,” Irene said, dismissive.
Alex helped Erich to his feet. “Are you all right? Is your nose broken?”
“I don’t think so. How do you know? I mean, how does it-?”
“Never mind that,” Irene said “This is going to need stitches. Ilse, call the doctor.”
“Now?” Erich said. “You heard them. They’re watching the house.”
“Get Lessing. Tell him to bring flowers. A Christmas call,” she said, but offhand, distracted, her eyes on Kurt.
It was then that Alex finally took it in, her hand soothing the side of his face, her body draped over his. He felt a prickling on his skin, peeking through a crack at something he wasn’t meant to see. The way her hand moved, soft, familiar. He stood still, hearing the blood in his ears. How long? All the while? Erich’s friend. Always around. But when? Not the summer, the air thick with sex, no one but the two of them. That couldn’t have been a lie. But then when? She looked up suddenly, feeling his stare, caught, and he knew again. How long? Did they do the same things? At least she didn’t look away, pretend he hadn’t seen, didn’t know. It would be in his face. She held his look. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s not about you. Don’t look at me like that. It’s different. I couldn’t help it. You have no right-
“I’ll get Lessing,” he said, breaking into her look, all the words, and then he turned to the door and it was over.
Outside he had stood for a minute, expecting to see a waiting SA uniform come out of the shadows, but no one was there. The street had been as empty and quiet as it was now, and he wondered for a second if both of them, the memory and this gray morning, were part of the same Berlin dream. The people he’d just seen were dead, lost to the past. And in the half-light the grim street now seemed something he’d imagined too. When he woke up, the hot Pacific sun would be burning off the morning fog and he’d be getting Peter ready for school, hurrying him for the bus, nursing a coffee.
He turned back to Hausvogteiplatz. Except he was awake, here, and it had already started. “Just settle in and we’ll be in touch,” Campbell had said. Some vague timetable, a week or two, not the moment he got here, the first meeting already set. “You can walk there. Through the park. Early.” Why so soon? He looked up. No fog to burn off. As light as Berlin was going to get.
Just as the bellboy had said, he had no trouble at the sector boundary. A barrier had been set up for car inspections, but even those seemed random and listless. Pedestrians just walked across the street. The Tiergarten had been broken up into garden allotments and was still bare of the tall trees of his childhood, but at least the debris he’d seen in photographs-a downed plane, burned-out trucks-had been cleared away. Now what? There were two ways to Lützowplatz, zigzagging down past the embassy quarter or straight out to the Grosser Stern and then down. Did it matter? No one had said how the meeting would happen, maybe not until he was out of the park, so he just kept to the road. A few people in dingy overcoats had already begun to gather near the charred Reichstag to swap watches and heirlooms and PX tins, the new Wertheim’s. No birds, an eerie quiet.
He was almost at the Victory Column when the car pulled up.
“Meier? Get in.”
An American voice. For a second Alex hesitated, not reaching for the door handle, as if there were still a choice.
“Get in.” Boyish, no hat, short military hair.
In the car, he offered his hand. “Willy Hauck. Nice to have you here.” Pronouncing Willy with a v.
“You’re German?”
“Not since I was a kid. Detroit. My father took a job there and never came back. I didn’t think I’d ever be back either, but here we are. Berliner Luft.” The German accented now with a lifetime of flat lake vowels, the voice crackling and on the run, like Lee Tracy’s.
“You didn’t want to come?”
He shrugged. “Things are happening here. So they move you up faster. They recruited me out of the army. G-2. They like it better if you went to Yale, but what the hell, I had the language, so off you go-beautiful Berlin.” He gestured toward the window. “That’s how most of us got here. If you can speak Kraut. Campbell’s got Polish too. His old man.”
“Campbell?”
“It used to be something else. Lots of z’s and who the hell knows. So. We haven’t got a lot of time. You want to be at Lützowplatz same time it would take to walk there.” They were driving out the other side of the circle, toward Charlottenburg. “Anybody behind you?”
“I don’t think so. Why the big hurry? I didn’t expect you to-”
“Something came up. So, let’s do exits first.”
Alex looked at him, a question.
“In case something goes wrong and you have to exit.”
“Oh.”
“Try to remember this, you can’t write it down, okay? BOB’s at twenty-one Föhrenweg, out in Dahlem.”
“BOB?”
“Berlin Operations Base. That’s your last resort. We have to assume it’s watched, so you turn up there you’re blown and all we can do is get you out of the country.”
“Twenty-one Föhrenweg,” Alex said.
“You know who used to live across the street? Max Schmeling.” Oddly proud of this, as if it meant something. “But like I say, that’s the fire exit. Otherwise, use the regular meetings if you need to get in touch.”
“Which are?”
“Depends where they set you up. Writers, people like that, they’ve been mostly putting in Prenzlauer Berg. Not a lot of bomb damage, so the buildings are in fairly good shape. So we’re assuming there. Close to Volkspark Friedrichshain, where you’ll like to walk.”
“And bump into somebody?”
“Near the fountains with the fairy tale characters. Know it?”
Alex shook his head. “Never been there.”
Hauck grinned. “A real West Ender, huh? Berlin stops at the Romanisches.”
“We never had any reason to go there, that’s all.”
“And now it’s home.”
“I go every day?”
“When you can. We’ll set up a time. It would make more sense with a dog, but with the rationing- But you still like to get out, get some exercise, clear the cobwebs.”
“I do, actually.”
“See? So you establish a routine. If they put you further out, we’ll have to change the place. Weissensee, you walk the lake. But that’s bigger houses. They keep those for the elite.”
“Not the help.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. The Party elite. Officials. Don’t worry, they like writers. You’re at the Adlon, right?”
“In the lap of luxury.”
Willy looked at him from the side. “They’ll want you to do things. Public appearances. They had Anna Seghers at a factory. Cutting a ribbon. Major Dymshits loves writers.”
“Who?”
“I thought they briefed you. Chief Cultural Officer. Or whatever the title is. Anyway, he calls the shots for the Soviets. He’s a big fan of yours. He’s the one told them to make the offer. To bring you over. He loves German writers.”