Deadfall in Berlin

by Robert Alexander

  Chapter 4

  “Oh,” I moaned.

  I was there, there on the other side. My entire being had flown like a starship to some distant universe. Inner space. I saw me, Will Walker, floating in black, no stars, no moon. Complete harmony where everything began and nothing ended.

  “Alecia, are you still here?”

  Into the blackness, her voice trickled, “Yes.”

  “This is a good one.” I grinned.

  A smirk on my face, I lay there in my lightless universe and floated to the side. It was like a sea without water. A world without gravity.

  “Will, would you like to tell me more,” she said, her words evenly spoken, “about the age regression you did back at your apartment?”

  I was still there in this place without matter, but suddenly everything shifted. This was the issue that had been bogging me, smothering me all my life.

  “My mother…”

  “Yes, can you tell me what happened?”

  I took a deep breath, bit at it. “She… she was murdered.”

  “Are you sure, Will?”

  I nodded. Clenched my teeth. “Positive. Like I told you, someone killed her.” In my inner darkness I knew that I could never deny that again. “All these years I've told everyone that she died in an air raid. But she didn't. She was murdered.”

  Alecia said, “I believe you, Will. And I'm very sorry to hear that. It was a terrible thing—”

  “Yes, terrible.”

  “And I can understand how much it upsets you.”

  “Very much. Very, very, very much. You see, my brother was dead and my father had been killed in Poland five years earlier. He was a soldier. So when my mother died, I was all alone.”

  “I know.” She paused, then asked, “Will, you're a very observant person. And you were a very smart, wonderful boy and you loved your mother.”

  “Yes!” My body was shaking. “Yes, I loved her!”

  “Of course you did.” She paused. “Will, who killed your mother?”

  “I… I can see the shape of a face—but I can't make out anything specific.” I tried to discern the nose, the eyes, the hair, but whatever was in front of me was hidden. “It's all black, so terribly black.”

  “Of course it is. Black is the color of fear and you were afraid.”

  “I am afraid. I still am.”

  “Will, you blocked it out because you needed to protect yourself, didn't you?”

  “Yes,” I confessed.

  “And that was good. That was part of your body's defenses, part of your mind's defenses. To protect. What you witnessed was so horrible that your mind turned it all to black so you couldn't see it. Your unconscious was taking care of you. It also allowed the adult part of yourself to look after you.”

  “No one else was around.”

  “I know. And you're alive today, Will, because you knew how to take care of yourself.”

  “Yes, there was an aspect of me that was very mature, very capable.” I heard a distant explosion and flinched. “And now to help myself I have to remember everything.”

  Alecia hushed her voice. “That's right. And you will be able to recall it all through hypnosis. Once you've done that, we'll work through whatever needs to be done.”

  “I believe that.” Good Alecia. Nice Alecia. I took a deep breath. “I'm ready. To go back, I mean.”

  “I'm proud of you, Will.”

  I tripped on a doubt. Could I really return to Berlin? Of course. I had just been there. Just this morning I had returned to 1945. I had stood atop Herr Schulenberg's flattened apartment house. I had felt the itchy, filthy wool pants on my legs, scrambled across shattered bricks in those old leather shoes I had torn from the body of a boy. Yes, most definitely I had gone through a time warp in my mind and returned to Berlin, beautiful, devastated Berlin.

  I took a deep breath. “Let's start.”

  “Okay, Will. You are already in a deep state of hypnosis. You're a very good subject, and I'm going to guide you. I'm going to direct you back in time, back through your memory. I'll be your guide and I'll always be here. If you need anything or you want to come back, all you have to do is say so and I'll help you shift your awareness back to 1975.”

  I couldn't resist. “Yes. All I have to do is tap my heels three times.”

  “Will…” An exasperated moment of silence passed before she said, “Now let's think of life not as a linear experience, not as something you pass through, leaving various events behind, events that become more and more distant and eventually forgotten. No, think of life as like the rings in a tree. A new ring for each year. A tree that is always expanding yet always containing what has passed before. Today you live at the outer ring. That is the present.”

  Her words splashed over me, filled me with hope. “Yes.”

  Could this be true? Could the foundations of my life not have been lost, not dribbled away? Perhaps. How wonderful it would be if all that I had once had was still within, if all the experiences had been gathered inside and held firmly and gently by the rings of the years. Some of it might be more densely hidden, but it might be there, able to be touched, sensed, and, yes, maybe experienced once again.

  “To understand what happened a long time ago, Will, we are going to return to one of the inner rings. It is a part of you that continues to live within and is actually one of the integral aspects of your entire being.”

  Lying in my sunless universe, I suddenly knew, felt, believed with every ounce of my life that Alecia was correct. I accepted her thesis completely. Yes, I had already gone back to Berlin once. I could go back again. Yet as my passage through time was about to begin, I felt a blob of salty water bead up outside my inner universe and begin to roll. That's a tear, I thought. It formed in my eye and now it's rolling down my cheek.

  “What's happening, Will? What's occurring to you?” asked Alecia.

  “All this means that I didn't necessarily leave my mother behind thirty years ago, right?”

  “Exactly. She's still within you. A part of your being.”

  “Thirty rings within?”

  “Yes,” said Alecia. “A ring for each year.”

  “I'm happy.”

  Whether my mother had died under the bombs or actually been murdered was one matter. That I had lost her so many years ago was an entirely different one. For so long I resisted growing old, hated it, because each year I aged meant that my mother was that much further left behind. It calcified the reality that she was never coming back. As an adult, I strived to look young. I picked the gray hairs from my head, covered up the little bays of baldness that washed upon my forehead, used creams to mask the wrinkles. Some thought it vanity, me the actor. It was, though, nothing more than an act of desperation: I didn't want to grow older because that implied leaving my mother further and further behind where she would appear as a fainter and fainter memory on some distant horizon. I feared, too, that a recent milestone—me age forty, Mama's death now thirty years back—could only mean that she would fall over my memory's horizon, disappear over the other side and be lost forever.

  With but a few sentences, however, Alecia the Wise had given me an entirely new perspective. I had not begun at point A, then gone off in one direction, discarding people and experiences like Coke cans along a highway that was never to be traversed again. No, everything was all still within me. Mama, my brother, Siam the elephant, my rusty bicycle, and perhaps even my father, who had been barely around long enough to father me before being sent east and to his demise. My tastebuds began to swell with excitement. Even Frau Ruppenthal's apple strudel was baking in my mind, now decades later.

  “Are you all right, Will?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes.”

  “Good. Let's go back a few years at a time. Picture yourself as thirty again. Do you see anything?”

  There I was. Thirty and anxious, desperate for work, fearful that I hadn't accomplished anything with my life. Just a droplet of an actor.

  “No, no,” I whined. “N
ot good. I didn't know if I was going to make it as an actor yet. I was a wreck at thirty. Let's… let's go back to…”

  Suddenly I was twenty-four, lean and hard. Very hard because I was pressed up alongside a beautiful girl named Ellen who had this long, reddish brown hair and deliciously soft skin and enormous, I mean enormous—

  “Will?” called my shrink's voice from far away.

  Oh, shit. I, recently graduated and hell-bent on stardom, jumped out of Ellen's bed. Christ, said Ellen, what's the matter? Nothing, I responded. It's just that… that…

  “Will, where are you?” asked Alecia.

  Who the hell's that, asked Ellen, sitting bolt-upright in my imagination. Do you have another girlfriend? I shook my head, moaned. I can explain everything, Ellen, I stammered, throwing on my corduroys and a flannel shirt. Trust me. I can—

  “Will?”

  Suddenly I was out Ellen's door. I cleared my throat, and said, “Sorry Alecia. I was just remembering something.”

  “You have a grin on your face. It must have been good.”

  My face pulsed like a hot beet. “Ah, yes.”

  “You ready to go back further?”

  “Sure.”

  Under Alecia's orchestration, I left Ellen, passed through ring after ring, and my youth began to unfold right before me. There I was in college in Ohio. Me in a play. Dad and Mom and teeny Cathy. Spoofers my dog. A birthday party. Eighth grade. My best friends Tony and Matt and Pete. Yes, this was easy. Me, the actor. In an instant I could recall my youth, slip into it like an old pair of jeans. All so easy. Not half as much work as doing Shakespeare or a Tom Stoppard character or that stupid part on a soap. I just had to become a younger me that was still alive within the rings of my life.

  “Will” chanted Alecia, “you're in a deep hypnotic state and we're going back. Back to Berlin. Take my presence and use it as the strength you need to block the side of fear. Just allow yourself to go very deep into hypnosis, to pass easily through the rings. And amazingly you are able to see so much while at the same time recognizing that it all happened thirty years ago. You can see and feel and experience everything, knowing that we'll be able to put it all into proper perspective at the end of our session.

  In a rush I went whirling past one inner circle after the next. There was a boat. The one I came over on and then… then…

  A very familiar scent began to fill my nose. I stepped atop a pile of rubble. Took in a deep breath. The night air was good. Rich and sandy, the scent of distant loamy soils. And plush pine forests. Concrete. Beer. And Bockwurst, all boiled and garlicky.

  “Will, what's happening?”

  Yes, I thought, looking around. Berliner Luft. I'm home.

  “Will?” said an airy voice.

  I looked around to see who had spoken, saw no one, then craned my head up toward the dark sky. There perched on a slim shelf of a floor and clinging like a weed to a mountainside was Frau Schulenberg's piano. I was tempted to throw rock after rock at it, see if I could dislodge the thing or at least hit a key or two.

  “Will, where are you?”

  I craned my head around, searched the shadows. There was nothing. No one. Who was that talking? An angel?

  “Ich heisse Willi. Ich wohne in Berlin” I gazed through the broken beams and shattered walls around me. “Wie heissen Sie? Woher kommen Sie?”

  “I don't speak German. Speak English.”

  “Was ist los? Ich sprech kein amerikanisch.”

  “I understand that you're Willi now, but you've come back through age regression. You have your future talents as well the perspective of a grown man. Willi, you can speak English”

  “I can? Oh.” The words coming out of my mouth startled me. “Smell the air? That's Berlin air.” I took a deep breath and was pleased. “You're Alecia, aren't you? Where are you?”

  Before she could answer, before I could see her, I became aware of a bucket of water hanging from my left hand. Water-schmater. Water? I looked down the mound of rubble and was abruptly filled with dread. Any moment a scream would pierce the still night.

  “Oh… no. Something terrible is about to happen.”

  “Slow it down, Willi. Take it nice and slow. Tell me what you see.”

  My eyes lifted and followed the ragged edge of wall. “A piano. Up high.” I looked up and into the clear night sky and saw a huge white orb. “And the moon. It's full tonight. Completely full. God, I've never seen such a huge moon before. The sky's a midnight blue, too.”

  Führer weather. We called it that because the weather was clear and perfect whenever the Führer held a rally. Of course, that was when he'd filled Germany with hope. Now there were no more rallies. Now the only things that came out during Führer weather were the planes. British bombers by night. The Americans by day. Clear skies, clear destruction.

  “There's going to be a major raid tonight,” I predicted, knowing I was absolutely right. “The Brits will strike Alexanderplatz and some factories to the north. Schöneberg—this district—will be hit some, but the piano up there is going to make it until the Russians start shelling the city.”

  “Willi, what else is happening? What else do you want to tell me?” gently called Alecia. “Just let yourself feel it.”

  Immediately there was a voice. No, voices. “Yes, I hear them. Talking.”

  “Okay, follow those sounds, Willi. Listen to the voices. Do you need to hear what they say?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked behind me. The man-woman-dark-stranger's voice was coming from back there, rising from the ruins of another building. Carefully, I set down the pail of water, making sure it wouldn't tip, go bang in the night, and then I began creeping, one cautious step at a time. I mustn't let them hear me or they'll come after me.

  “What is it? What do you hear?” called my guardian angel.

  “There's a room. A little room in the ruins with all the windows blown out. They're in there, sitting around a candle.”

  “Who, Willi?”

  “I don't know. There are three or four people. I recognize the voices, I think, but I can't look in or they'll know I'm spying on them.”

  “What are they saying?”

  One of them was crying. “The countess is saying bad things about my mother. She hates Mama. She wants to kill her. And… and I think the man with one leg… is agreeing with her. He's saying how they're going to have to get rid of her. She's bad, he's saying. Beyond control. And they must… must…” His threat was so brutal that I started to shake. “And… and there's someone else in there with the countess and the man with one leg. The pilot. He's saying there's a way, a quick easy way to deal with her. Anton should be there as well, but he's not. He's Jewish and maybe he's already going after my mother. He hates her. He was friends with her but now he would carve her to pieces for what she did to him.”

  I fell back against the stone wall. Mother? They all hate her, want her dead. Oh, God. I have to tell her. I have to warn her. The ominous threats were slithering over bricks and stone, searching her out. I had to be quick, to reach my mother first. Maybe Anton was already on the way! Hurry!

  I was crying. I wiped my eyes and looked up. The moon. So big and bright and white and innocent. Oh, God. Hurry, Willi! I reached out with my skinny leg and tripped on a brick and the brick went tumbling and banging downward.

  Who's that? they all shouted out.

  They mustn't see me! They mustn't know I'd overheard their plans to dispose of my mother. As quickly as I could, I tore back to my bucket and the pile that was Herr Schulenberg's house. Hurry, Willi! Hurry before they get her!

  “Willi, are you all right?”

  What was this all about? What was I going to say to Mama? How could I help her? Save her? How? I had to think quickly. I raced over the pile of rubble that was the massive grave of the two Schulenberg boys and lunged for my pail of water. But just as quickly I stopped. What could I do? How could I protect my mother, me, a scrawny kid?

  I heard it then, the first scream
. A high-pitched voice that crawled into the dark, stretched higher and higher. I looked up at the piano, at the full moon set against that rich night-blue sky. Then I heard her cry again.

  “Mama?” I called. “Mama, are you all right?”

  But I knew she wasn't, and it was obvious that everything was wrong, would never be right again. I clutched the stupid pail of water. No. Not my mother. Not her. I just wanted there to be no more bombs, no more soldiers, but someone was hurting her, beating her. Someone had reached her first, and I knew what was about to happen and I had to hurry to protect Mama! But I couldn't move. My feet were stuck and I couldn't move!

  “No!” I cried, struggling to lunge forward.

  “Willi! Willi, I'm going to count from ten to one and—”

  Someone was about to kill my mother. One of those people. But it wasn't my fault! It wasn't my fault!

  “Seven, six, five, four…

  “Ah,” cried my mother. “Ah!”

  “Mama, Mama!”

  I slid down a hill of bricks. Tripped, tried to scramble to my feet. The bucket of water dropped from my hand. Went clang, bang, smash. I looked up at the big moon. Someone's killing my mother, I shouted deep inside myself, and I can't stop it! I can't save her!

  “I can't! I can't! I can't!” I screamed.

  I tried to move forward, but couldn't. I cried out again.

  “MAMA!”

  “Three, two, one.” And then, “Will, it's all right. You're here. I'm here.”

  I rolled into her, lunged from the cushy chair and into her embrace. Alecia took me and held me, and I bawled and clutched at her like a lost child hysterically trying to find his way home.

  Tears squirting out of my eyes, I sobbed, “It was one of those people.” My mind clicked: the countess, the one-legged man, the pilot, Anton. “They heard me and followed me. Alecia, I think I led the killer directly to my mother!”

  “It's okay, Will. It's okay,” she said, holding me tight and rubbing my back.

  I collapsed on the floor and kissed her knees with gratitude, so indebted was I. From the way she held me, I could tell. From her panicked grasp, her tight fingers. Yes, I sensed that at last, after all this time, someone other than I not only knew, but understood and felt, really felt, my pain.