by Celia Rees
“Apocryphal, surely?” Edith had put down her fork, even though she didn’t quite believe the story. Too like Sweeney Todd.
“Yeah, most likely.” Adeline prodded the pale, flaccid schnitzel. “But you gotta admit, it could be true. Ever wondered how these places have always got everything when people on the street are starving? True or not, says something, doesn’t it? I’m figuring out ways of getting it into the piece I’m writing. It works as a metaphor, and readers love that kind of thing.”
“Everything to your satisfaction?” The waiter was back to clear the plates.
“Perfect.” Adeline smiled up at him.
“Anything for dessert?”
“No thank you.” She turned to Edith. “Ready?”
The entrance to the Kool Kat Klub was crowded with young women waiting for dates, or simply waiting. They stood around talking to the men entering or leaving, while their little brothers hovered, watching for discarded cigarette butts. The door was not much more than a hole in the wall. Ghost letters above the door, set at zany angles, announced that it used to be the Krazy Kabarett. Most of the cabarets had been closed by the Nazis, or by the war. Now they were coming back. In a city that seemed to be dead or dying, they were thriving, like the fruiting bodies of some long-dormant mycelium erupting into life.
Narrow, dark stairs led down to a cellar. The walls were painted purple and black; the low ceiling was tented tarpaulin to keep out the rain from the ruined upper stories. Under the stench of sweat and cigarettes, Edith caught the bombed-out undertone of burned timber, rottenness, and damp. The cellar extended like a long cavern to a small stage and a tiny dance floor. Tables filled the rest of the space, occupied mostly by servicemen, some in civvies, some in uniform: Americans and British, even a few Russians in breeches and high polished boots. The men were accompanied by young women, scantily clad and highly made-up, laughing and flirting, hectic with free drinks on empty stomachs. Other women and boys glided through the throng, delivering drinks and collecting orders.
“Dori’ll be somewhere,” Adeline said as they elbowed their way through the throng at the bottom of the stairs. “She knows the guy here. They go back prewar.”
They threaded through tables, moving toward the tiny dance floor where a few couples swayed to a quartet playing an approximation of American jazz.
“There will be cabaret later,” a voice said in carefully enunciated English. Edith turned to a man in evening dress, white tie, and stiff collar. His brilliantined hair gleamed like patent leather. His thin cheeks were chalky with powder, his lips painted violet, his eyes rimmed with black. “Welcome, ladies.” He bowed. “Tonight we are very crowded . . .”
“We’re with Dori.” Adeline smiled.
“Ah, Dori. Her table is over there, I think. Can I get you something to drink?” He snapped his fingers at a passing waiter. “On the house as friends of Dori’s. Vodka, gin, bourbon, brandy, champagne? Our friends in the Four Powers are most obliging. I will send it over.”
He bowed again and left them to welcome two Red Army officers in fluent Russian.
“That’s Rudi.” Dori had come up behind them. “Looks exactly like he did before Hitler shut his old place down. Funny who made it through and who didn’t. God knows how he survived. Our table is over here. Along with Tom McHale.” She waved to the American, who was leaning against the bar, smoking a cigar and looking bored. “The gang’s all here.”
He smiled and started to make his way over.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Of course not.” Dori kissed him on both cheeks. “It’s good to see you. Everyone seems to be in tonight.” She nodded toward the next table. “Including our Russian friends.”
“Hey, honey,” Tom addressed a passing waitress. “Can you get a bottle of bourbon? For my friends at the next table.” He sat down and gave the Russians a wave. “There aren’t as many as there used to be, and those are likely to be NKGB. Watching us watching them.” Tom McHale looked around. “Half the girls in here work for them, trading in pillow talk or blackmail.”
“In exchange for what?” Edith asked.
“In exchange for mom and pop not getting hauled off to the Gulag. The game’s getting dirty.” He raised his glass to the two Russians. Just then, the telephone in the center of the table rang. “Goddamn! I never knew those things worked.” Tom grinned and picked it up. “Edith. It’s for you.”
Edith took the receiver. Maybe Harry had gotten here early.
“Hello?”
She could see a man waving. Not Harry. Jack in civvies with a group of men and a bevy of Mädchen. He was getting up, making his way toward them. Edith replaced the receiver.
“This is Jack,” she said by way of introduction. “He drives for me. Jack, meet Tom, Dori, and Adeline.”
Jack nodded at the assembled company but only had eyes for Dori.
“Were you in SOE during the war?”
“Well, yes . . .” Dori gave a puzzled smile.
“It’s an honor,” he said, caught between bashful and eagerness, neither characteristic typical of him. “You helped a flyer pal of mine escape through France. We saw you once on Dean Street, coming out of the French House. He told me the story. Knew you straightaway. Not a face I’d forget.”
Dori gave him her warmest smile. She liked the awed attention of good-looking men.
“Why don’t you join us and tell me all about him. We hardly ever heard what happened after people left us.”
Jack didn’t need a second invitation. He took a chair from another table and sat next to her.
“I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”
Dori laughed and tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t be silly!”
Soon the two of them were deep in conversation. Adeline was talking to Tom. Edith couldn’t hear what they were saying through the rising chatter. Every now and then Tom glanced over, which made her think they were talking about her. She turned back to the stage.
The band had gone. A papier-máché broken wall was trundled out by a young woman dressed in a shapeless coat, a pair of outsize men’s trousers, her hair tied in a rag, her face streaked with dust. She held a trowel and a brick and clinked them together to gain the crowd’s attention. She sang about the Trümmerfrauen; the plight of German women in general, their men lost or absent. At the end of the number, she whipped off her scarf, stripped off the coat, and stepped out of the trousers. She stood in silk slip and lacy knickers to whistles and roars of applause. Her next song was in the languages of the occupying powers. It was about sex and covered everything from Soviet rape to Hershey bars and cigarettes. She finished with a bow and a wink for the girls like her. The message was clear. Do you think we’d do this if we didn’t have to? The blades of satire were as sharp as ever. The audience clapped and hooted their appreciation, the women loudest of all. They yelled and whooped for the woman onstage who’d given such lusty, defiant voice to their carefully cloaked anger and despair.
Adeline shouted across the table, “Good to see cabaret’s alive and well even if everything else is dead and buried.”
Edith had the feeling that she was making notes.
The band were playing the jitterbug. Couples were getting up to dance. Jack was leading Dori off by the hand. Adeline and Tom stood up to join them.
Edith sipped her drink and played with a packet of cigarettes on the table, turning it over and over.
“Have one of mine.” A man reached over her shoulder, shaking a cigarette from a pack of Camels.
“I don’t smoke.”
“I know.” He leaned closer. He was now clean-shaven, smelling of the Vetiver cologne she remembered. “Meet me tomorrow morning. Same place, 9 a.m.”
Then he was gone, moving through the throng.
Arrange another meeting, Dori had said. Now, she’d done it.
33
Russian Sector, Berlin
27th April 1946
Pfannkuchen
Speciality of the city. Ever
yone else in Germany calls them Berliners. Jam doughnuts, by any other name.
Streuselschnecken
Rhubarb Snails
Similar to a Chelsea Bun (p. 136, Bread, Biscuits, and Cakes) but filled with fruit (in this case rhubarb) and topped with a rough crumble mixture. Schnecken (snail in German) perfectly describes the shape of the coiled buns, and this would be an excellent use of rhubarb which is often plentiful when other fruit is scarce and one is looking for another use for it once it has been stewed, pied, and crumbled.
He came out from under the trees. He must have been watching her approach. It was early. Few people around but still he seemed wary. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before. Same hat, same raincoat.
“You looked different last night,” she said.
“In the day, out here, it is best not to look too prosperous,” Kurt said. “Come. I know a place, not far.” He put a proprietary arm around her shoulder. “A small café. We can talk there.”
He took her to a place near the Brandenburg Gate. How quickly these places had popped back up again, business as usual between the ruins and the rubble. Small tables covered in oilcloth. The coffee served in thick cups.
He ordered coffee and a little plate of jam doughnuts.
The coffee came black, coarse ground and bitter tasting, more than a little of the ersatz about it. Kurt bit into one of the doughnuts, red jam oozed from the center.
“You have to try.” He dusted sugar from his fingers. “They are a speciality of the city.”
She picked one up, the crisp dough still warm from the fryer, coated in ground sugar.
He was still wearing that ring, heavy gold and carnelian. She remembered the last time they’d been together like this, outside that café in Heidelberg, and marveled how little she felt for him now. Gone was the lovelorn girl, her heart torn into bleeding pieces. Gone was the woman who had run the bath to overflowing to hide her sobs as she mourned the loss of love. He had betrayed her, many times over; now it was her turn. For her. For those lost women. For Elisabeth.
“What are you thinking?” he asked. He still pronounced th as s. She remembered trying to teach him, them laughing together.
“Oh, nothing.” She tore open the doughnut. “Just wondering where they got the ingredients.”
“British, Americans. They trade like everybody does.” He dusted the sugar from his hands. “But we’re not here to talk about that.”
What were they there to talk about?
“You have been looking for me.” He said it as a statement of fact. “Now you’ve found me.”
“I found Elisabeth,” Edith corrected. “Elisabeth found you.”
“What does she want? Do you know?”
Edith thought quickly. “A divorce. She wants a divorce.”
“And you?” He sat back. “What do you want?”
“Not me, exactly.”
“If not you, then . . .” His face cleared. He gave that tight smile, hope sparking light into his blue eyes. “Leo!”
“Yes.” Edith spread her hands. “You got it in one try.”
He sat forward, excited now, hands tightly clasped to control his agitation.
“When? What will happen?”
“You will be contacted.” Edith got ready to go. She didn’t have the first clue. If there were plans, no one had told her what they might be.
“Edith, wait,” Kurt caught her hand and held it. “Don’t leave yet. I have more to say. This is my best chance. I know that. My only chance if I’m not to end up in Moscow, but I must see her.” He looked up at Edith, his eyes at their most pleading. “We parted badly. If she wants a divorce, so be it, but I won’t go anywhere unless you promise that she will see me.”
“It’s really not in my power.” Edith took her hand from his. “But I’ll make sure they know.”
Back at the hotel, Dori and Adeline were waiting in her room.
“And? What happened?” Dori asked.
Edith took off her coat. “I told him Leo wanted him,” she said simply.
“How did he react?”
“Like a drowning man who’s just been thrown a life preserver. What I didn’t know is why you want him. No, that’s not right.” She turned to Dori. “I know why you want him, but don’t know what the plan is, if there is one, of course.”
“Of course there’s a plan!” Dori looked stung.
“So? What is it?”
Dori sat back in her chair, thinking fingers steepled. “Okay. The plan is . . . The plan is to get him out. Out of the Russian Sector for a start, then out of Berlin and on his way south. To Italy. For that we need help from the Americans. They use ratlines all the time to get ‘visitors,’ as they call them, out of Europe.” She looked over to Adeline. “Adeline’s arranging a meeting with Tom McHale tonight.”
“You’re going to help him escape!” Edith looked from one to the other, completely at a loss. “I don’t understand . . .”
“No.” Dori cut in. “He’s not going to escape. He’s not going to escape at all. Just the opposite. But we need to be in an arena where we can take control. He’s no good to anyone in the Russian Sector, is he?”
“So you’re giving him to the Americans? They want him as much as Leo does and for the same reasons!”
“We want them to think they’ve got him. Then we’ll step in.”
“Double-cross them?” Adeline frowned. “That’s a big risk, Dori.”
“I know!” She turned on Adeline, eyes blazing. She didn’t like being questioned like this. “I’m working with War Crimes and Drummond. We know what we’re doing—you’ll just have to trust us!” She turned her dark gaze, still sparking, to Edith. “Now I’ve got a question for you. How did you know to meet Kurt in the Tiergarten?”
“A message. From Frau Schmidt.”
“How did she know you would be in Berlin?”
“Elisabeth, I suppose.”
“So, Frau Schmidt knows that you, a British Control Commission officer, are looking for a German war criminal, and she’s setting up a meeting with him in the Tiergarten? No, no, no!” She shook her head rapidly. “That doesn’t add up in any way!”
“What do you mean?”
“You could have arrived with a troop of Military Police ready to cart him off to Spandau. Think about it, Edith!”
The telephone rang. Adeline answered.
“Driver’s here.”
Dori stood up and put on her coat. “I arranged for Jack to come and pick us up. I told him to wangle a Jeep. I want to have a look at where Herr Doktor von Stavenow lays his head.”
Edith thought about it all the way through the Brandenburg Gate, into the Russian Zone, and down the wide thoroughfare. Bare now of trees. Unter den Linden, without the limes. Of course. It was obvious. There had been no message from Frau Schmidt. Which meant it came directly from Elisabeth. Which meant that she must have been in touch with Kurt somehow. Edith stared, distracted, seeing but not seeing. Elisabeth hadn’t said anything about that. Not a word . . .
“Up here. Turn left.” Dori was directing Jack.
It was impossible not to feel exposed here. The city was really no different, but this side felt even more desolate, the streets empty of people, the walls adorned with huge photographs of Stalin, painted hammers and sickles, Communist slogans in Roman and Cyrillic script.
“Now right. Left again.” Dori consulted the note on her lap. “This should be it.”
The curving street was residential, or had been. They looked out for house numbers scrawled on walls, or pillars, or in a few cases still on the actual buildings.
The house stood alone. The dwellings either side reduced to a few jagged walls jutting from reefs of fallen masonry.
Jack coasted the last few yards. The Jeep came to a stop outside a small café. Jack made a show of trying the engine, the turning motor sounding harsh and loud in the quiet street. He got out and opened the hood. Dori went into the small café to ask for help. “Danke. I’ll try across the r
oad,” she said loudly and walked across to Kurt’s house. Jack took off his jacket and dragged a bag of tools from the back.
“It’ll be the carburetor full of muck. It’s the fuel. Full of God knows what.”
Edith and Adeline went to the café and sat down at one of the rickety tables to watch as Dori went up the steps and peered at numbers. Had Elisabeth been in touch with Kurt? Edith thought back. She’d shown her the address on Monday. Not really time for messages to go back and forth. That was when she showed it to you, the insidious, precise little voice of suspicion whispered. You don’t know how long she’d had it . . .
Adeline jogged her arm. “She’s in!”
A man was coming out of the building, tipping his hat to Dori, holding the door open for her.
She showed you the address because she knew you were going to Berlin over the weekend, the voice in her head continued to reason. Then she set up the meeting . . .
Adeline nudged Edith again. A small woman was coming out of the café, wiping her hands on her washed-out wraparound apron. Edith explained that they had broken down. The woman nodded, pushing a lock of dark hair, streaked with gray, back under her faded kerchief. So the other lady had said. No telephone. She indicated the drooping web of lines. The other side, maybe. Meanwhile, would they like something? The Streuselschnecken was very good.