An angry Soviet political officer had suddenly arrived on the scene, shouting and waving von Behren back from the corpse on the ground. The other soldiers, one of them hastily concealing the bottle inside his heavy woolen greatcoat, had retreated, looking embarrassed. He’d made his own retreat then; a few of the Russian soldiers had waved goodbye to him, receiving sharp glares from the officer as reprimand.
The image of what had been the Reich minister remained sharp in his mind, Goebbels’ face reduced to blackened ash. Von Behren made his way down from the ruins of the studio, back to the street. He kept walking. There were other things that were more pleasing to dwell on. Such as leaving here at last, and going anywhere else.
“This is the place.” Pavli looked up at the block of flats. The buildings on either side had been gutted by fire, and the windows of this one had been shattered. A few had been boarded up, but most still gaped empty, or with broken-armed crosses dangling from their centers. He checked again the tattered scrap of paper. “She said to come here.”
Beside him, Marte nodded as she gazed up at the facade blackened by smoke. She had turned up the collar of the soldier’s coat and covered her hair with a rough woolen scarf, so nobody would be likely to recognize her. They had taken back alleys and picked their way across the streets where the mounds of debris were highest, keeping their faces averted from any others wandering the city.
“I remember…” She touched Pavli’s shoulder. “Her name. When we were at the Lebensborn hostel. It was Liesel.”
The note that had been delivered to her bore no signature. Pavli had been with her when a silent Wehrmacht veteran, with a head swathed in dirty bandages and limping along on crutches, had brought it. The words it had contained, about her son, had been enough. Marte had nothing with which to pay the soldier but a stone-hard heel of bread, but that was enough. He had turned with a bare nod of thanks and disappeared back into the shadows of the cratered streets.
“Let me go first.” The aspect of the building, the dark entrance hallway behind the front door, aroused misgivings in Pavli. He stepped through, regretting now that he hadn’t brought any matches or a candle stub to light the way. Marte followed close behind him as he groped for the railing of the stairs.
He heard laughter and the voice of an American, footsteps coming heavy toward them. At the landing, he drew Marte back against the wall; a G.I. with his cap pushed far back on his head, his arm around the shoulders of a German woman, tromped past without seeing the two of them, trailing the smell of alcohol and raw-scented eau de cologne . When their raucous noise had gone out into the street, Marte could no longer be restrained; she pushed Pavli aside and ran up the rest of the steps.
“Ah – and here is our famous actress! How thoughtful of you to pay a visit.”
Pavli caught up with her at the end of the top floor’s corridor. Daylight poked through the charred roof timbers. He leaned into the room with his hands braced against the doorway, catching his breath, and saw Marte standing before another woman lying with her back against the arm of a stained Biedermeyer sofa. The woman’s mocking smile revealed a tooth missing at one corner of her mouth.
“Where is he?” Marte’s hands trembled at her sides. “My son…”
“Such impatience!” The woman turned her smile toward Pavli, trying to draw him in. “All these years that when she couldn’t have cared less about her little boy’s welfare, and now everything has to be done at once.” The smile disappeared as she looked again at Marte. “Years when I took care of him – when he was as much my child as yours.”
Pavli saw the room’s contents now, the cases of canned goods with markings in both English and German, the unopened bottles of liquor, cartons of cigarettes and the flat, dark bars of American chocolate. An untidy heap of women’s clothing lay on the floor, some new looking, other pieces shabby and worn. The woman herself had streaks of grey in her blond hair, though Marte had told him that she was the same age as her; her cheeks bore patches of rouge nearly as bright and unnatural as her reddened lips. He could easily guess that the girl with the American soldier, who had passed them by on the stairs, was in this woman’s employ, in one of the few businesses that could flourish between the victors and the defeated.
“Your note said you have him here with you -” Marte turned her head, her eyes puzzled, as though she were trying to catch a more elusive scent through the room’s cloying perfume. “I don’t…” She brought her gaze back to the woman. “Where is he? I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you anything you want -”
“Yes, of course. You will pay me. You’ll pay me a great deal.” The woman poured from a bottle into a teacup on the low table before her. She held the liquor up toward Pavli, smiling coquettishly, then shrugged and set it back down on the floor when he shook his head. “And that’s as it should be, isn’t it? Because everything you have is stolen from me.” Her voice became tight and harsh, her eyes glaring now at Marte. “Everything – right down to that fool who fathered your bastard. He should have been mine as well, but you stole him from me, with your coy little ways and your pretty face -”
“Please…” The woman’s vehemence seemed to stun Marte. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
“Yes, you do – you’ve always known. He should have been the father of my child, so you see, it makes sense, doesn’t it – the boy is my child, isn’t he? And all your money and fame – it should have been me up on the screens, with everybody looking at me and adoring me. You’re nothing, a mongrel bitch, compared to me. So everything you have is stolen, it’s mine, and now it’s time to pay it back to me. Everything .”
“Where is he?” Marte’s expression became even more frantic, the room trapping her. “I don’t… I don’t feel him here.” She turned back to Pavli in the doorway, tears trembling in her eyes. “My child… I don’t feel him anywhere! I knew he was alive… when you first came to me… but now -” Her voice broke into a cry. “I don’t know! I can’t feel him anymore!”
He wanted to wrap her in his arms and take her away from the glutted, shabby room and the cruelly smiling woman. He’d already stepped toward Marte when the woman raised herself from the sofa, pulling a thin silk wrap closer about herself.
“Oh, very well – you want to see your little boy, than you shall.” The woman’s voice twisted with contempt. “I brought him a long way, I carried him here; I’m not about to lose track of such a valuable little item. Come along – I’ll show him to you.”
They followed her down another corridor, to the back of the flat. The woman’s hand, with its nails painted bright red, gestured over her shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll be able to work out some suitable arrangement. Of course, I can’t let you have the boy, to keep all to yourself. I’m not a fool. You must come and visit him, and take care of him – I’m tired enough of that, God knows.” The woman rattled on, as though talking to herself. “It’ll be in a much nicer place, though; with your money, we’ll see to that…”
Behind the last door, a small room, the only light that which spilled in from the hallway; it revealed a small figure lying on a rumpled bed. Marte rushed past the woman and knelt down, her fingertips reaching for the sleeping child’s face.
“A mother’s love.” The woman leaned against the side of the doorway, her sneer directed at Pavli. “How charming. You would never know from the way she acts – but then she is an actress, isn’t she? – how she abandoned her child all these years.”
Marte suddenly cried out. “No -” The word was muffled by her hand against her mouth as she stepped back from the bed. The blanket that had been pulled to the boy’s chin slid to the bare planks of the floor. Her eyes widened as she gazed down at the small body.