Zoo Stationee

by David Downing

  Frau Heidegger was waiting for him—or anyone—in the lobby. Her husband had been killed in the last war—“You might have been the one who shot him,” she frequently told Russell—and his brother had just been round to see her, full of useful information about the next one. She had assumed it would take place at some distance from her door, but this illusion had been cruelly shattered. “Cities will be bombed flat,” her brother-in-law had told her, “flat as ironing boards.”

  Russell told her that, yes, English or French or Russian bombers could now reach Berlin, but that most of them would be shot down if they tried, because air defenses were improving all the time. She didn’t look convinced, but then neither was he. How many Europeans, he wondered, had any idea what kind of war they were headed for?

  FRIDAY MORNING WAS SUNNY and cold. After a late breakfast of rolls and coffee at a local café, Russell walked west along the Landwehrkanal. He wasn’t due to meet Effi for a couple of hours, so he took his time, stopping to read his morning paper on a bench near the double-decker bridges which carried the U-bahn and Reichsbahn lines over the torpid brown water. Coal-laden barges chugged by, leaving thin trails of oil in their wake.

  He walked on for another kilometer or so, leaving the canal where it passed under Potsdamerstrasse. Almost exactly twenty years earlier, the bodies of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht had been fished out of waters close to this spot. The empty site on the other side of the road had been home to a synagogue until the previous November. Rosa, of course, had been everything the Nazis despised—a Jew, a communist, a woman who refused to stay home and rear children. Russell was surprised that no official celebration had been decreed for the anniversary of her death.

  Cutting through side streets, he eventually reached the domed Ubahn station at Nollerndorfplatz, and started walking up Kleiststrasse toward the distant spires of the Kaiser Memorial church. As the Ubahn tracks beside him slid slowly underground, the shops grew progressively larger and richer, the awnings of the pavement cafés more decorative. Despite the cold, most of the outside seats were occupied; men and women sat in their overcoats, or tightly wrapped in large blankets, chewing their cream cakes and sipping at their steaming coffees.

  Both sidewalks and road were crowded now. Shoppers streamed in and out of the KaDeWe department store on Wittenbergplatz, cars and trams ran bumper to bumper on the narrower Tauenzienstrasse, jostling each other round the neo-Gothic Memorial Church, with its distressingly secular mosaics celebrating the highly dubious glories of past German emperors. Walking past it, and thinking about his conversation with Frau Heidegger, Russell had a sudden mental picture of jagged spires looming out of a broken roof, a future Berlin pre-figured in his memories of northern France.

  He started up the busy Kurfürstendamm, or the Ku’damm, as everyone called it. The Café Uhlandeck, where he was supposed to meet Effi, was a ten minute stroll away, and he still had half an hour to spare. An African parrot in a pet shop caught his attention: It was the sort of birthday present Effi would love, but he doubted her ability to look after it properly. For one thing she was away too often. For another, she was Effi.

  A woman in a fur coat emerged from the shop with two pedigree schnauzers in tow. Both had enamel swastikas fastened to their collars, and Russell wondered whether they had pictures of the Führer pinned up inside their kennels. Would that be considered a sign of respect, or the lack of such? Political etiquette in the Third Reich was something of a minefield.

  He passed the “aryanized” Grunfeld factory, and the site of another destroyed synagogue. A photographic album of such sites would be a best-seller in Nazi Germany: Judenfrei: The Photographic Record. Page after page of burned synagogues, followed by “then and now” pictures of aryanized firms. A forward by the Führer, which would probably turn out to be longer than the book. The lucky author would probably get invites to Goering’s hunting weekends and Streicher’s whipping orgies.

  Russell stopped and watched a tram cross the intersection, bell clanging. Why was he feeling so angry this morning? Was it the kindertransport and the Wiesner girls? Or just six years of accumulated disgust? Whatever it was, it served no purpose.

  Reaching the Café Uhlandeck he sat at one of the outside tables and stared back down the Ku’damm in search of Effi’s familiar silhouette. He had met her a few days before Christmas 1933, while researching a piece on Leni Riefenstahl for a Hollywood gossip magazine. At a studio party someone had pointed out a slim, black-haired woman in her late twenties, told Russell that her name was Effi Koenen, and that she had appeared alongside Riefenstahl when the latter was still acting in films, rather than directing them.

  Effi’s part in that film, as she was only too happy to inform him, had consisted of “five lines, two smiles, one pout, and a dignified exit.” She had thought Riefenstahl a good actress, but had hated Triumph of the Will for its humorlessness. Russell had asked her out to dinner, and rather to his astonishment she had accepted. They had got on like a house on fire—in the restaurant, on the half-drunken walk home to her flat, in her large soft bed. Five years later, they still did.

  The flat was a couple of blocks north of the Ku’damm, a three room affair which her wealthy parents had bought in the early 1920s from a victim of the Great Inflation, and given to her as a twenty-fifth birthday present. Her acting career had been reasonably successful—a film here, a play there, a musical if nothing else was on offer—without making her rich or particularly famous. She was occasionally recognized on the street when Russell was with her, and almost always for the part she had played in a 1934 film, the wife of a stormtrooper beaten to death by communists. That had been a “seventeen lines, one smile, one scream, dignified-at-funeral” part.

  She was currently appearing in Barbarossa, a musical biography of the twelfth-century Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I. As one of his generals’ wives, she sang part of the joyous send-off when they left for the Crusades, and part of the lament for those who failed to come home. Like most of the cast, she wasn’t much of a singer, but no one had bothered to include musical ability, a decent script, or memorable songs in the production. It was, as one of the early Berlin reviews put it, “a hymn to national consciousness.”

  Much to Effi’s disgust it had pulled in large audiences, both in Berlin during the weeks leading up to Christmas and across the Reich during the holiday season itself. A second season in Berlin was beginning that night and Effi expected the seats to be full again: “All those who couldn’t believe how bad it was the first time will be coming back to make sure.”

  Russell hadn’t seen her for almost a fortnight, which seemed a long time. They generally spent as much of the weekend together as their—mostly her—work allowed, along with at least one night in midweek and an unpredictable number of lunches and afternoons. She was fond of saying that her three-year marriage to a now-famous actor had left her with a love of living alone, and had never suggested that Russell move in with her. He told himself and everyone else that he was happy, more than happy, with their days and nights together, and happy to spend the other days and nights without her. And most of the time he believed it. Just occasionally he found himself thinking that love was indivisible, and that loving someone was resenting each hour apart. He did love Effi, from her long raven hair to her small brown toes. He loved everything about her, he thought, looking at his watch, except for her complete inability to arrive anywhere on time.

  It was 12:25 when she finally appeared. She was wearing the black overcoat which almost reached her ankles, a new crimson scarf wrapped around her neck, chin, and mouth, and the Russian fur hat she had bought in Moscow ten years before, yet even trussed up like a mummy she turned the heads of male passersby. “I’ve got a cold,” was the first thing she said once they’d embraced. “I need soup.”

  Russell suggested that they go inside, but she refused. “Fresh air’s the best thing for colds,” she insisted.

  He got them both bowls of soup and watched her demolish hers. “We got in at four in the morning,” she said between spo
onfuls, “and we’ve got to be in early this evening to discuss some changes the musical director has in mind.”

  “A new score?” Russell asked.

  “If only. It’ll be nothing. He just has to justify the fact that he’s still being paid.” She started tearing up a roll and dropping it in the soup. “You’ll pick me up after the show?”

  “Of course. I’ll come and watch the last half hour if they’ll let me in. It’s the same man on the door?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll make sure they know you’re coming.” She spooned a chunk of sodden bread into her mouth. “This is good. I feel better already. How have you been? How’s Paul?”

  “Haven’t seen him yet. But he sounds all right.”

  “Danzig?”

  “Suitably gloomy,” he said. He told her about the stamp wars, which made her laugh, and the Soviet request for articles, which drew a raised eyebrow. “It’s just work,” he said. There didn’t seem any point in mentioning the oral reports, or in spoiling their reunion with an account of the kindertransport and his day in jail.

  She used the last of his roll to soak up the last of her soup. “I feel much better,” she said again. “And I’ve still got three hours before I have to be at the theater.” She reached out a slender hand for his. “Shall we go back to the flat?”

  LATER THAT EVENING, RUSSELL arrived backstage in time to hear the lament for the fallen heroes. It seemed more Wagnerian than ever, and he realized that the musical director had decided to apply the Third Reich’s guiding principle—never speak when you can shout. The military widows now had an entire choir of breast-swelling Valkyries to augment their lamentations. The front rows of the audience looked suitably stunned.

  After the show, Russell talked football with the stage-door-keeper while he waited for Effi. She emerged after half an hour or so, still snuffling but full of post-performance energy. It was clear and cold outside, the sidewalks crowded with people. They walked arm in arm past the entrance to the aquarium, and along the southern side of the zoo toward the glowing glasshouse which straddled the elevated lines at Zoo Station. The station buffet was doing a roaring trade, but they managed to find a couple of stools and order a nightcap. This was the last place in Berlin where Jews could still buy a coffee, but there were no obvious Jewish faces in evidence. The city by night was an Aryan preserve.

  As they left the buffet an international express steamed out across Hardenbergstrasse, rumbling the girders of the bridge and pumping bursts of white smoke toward the stars. Russell found himself wishing, if only for a moment, that he and Effi were two of the silhouettes in the necklace of illuminated windows, headed for another life in Amsterdam or Paris or New York—anywhere, in fact, beyond Hitler’s rancid realm.

  It was almost one when they got back to the flat. Their lovemaking that afternoon had been almost frenzied, but now they took it slowly, luxuriously, taking each other to the brink again and again before finally, joyously, tumbling over it together. Wrapped in each other’s arms, Effi went to sleep almost immediately, but Russell’s brain refused to let him be. He had not been angry with the Nazis that morning, he realized. He had been angry with himself. Angry at his own helplessness. Angry that all he could manage was fantasies of escape.

  It suddenly occurred to him that his imaginary book of photographs might make a real impact abroad. Especially in America, where the Jewish organizations had some political clout. He could get pictures of old Jewish businesses from press libraries and shoot the rest himself with Zembski’s camera. Getting it out would be a problem, but he’d worry about that—and ensuring his own anonymity—when the time came. And if anyone noticed him taking pictures of burned-out synagogues he could say he was compiling the record of anti-Semitic triumphs he had originally envisaged. He smiled to himself in the dark.

  THE NEXT MORNING THEY walked to their usual café in the Tiergarten for milky coffee and rolls. The winter sun was already riding high in the southeastern sky, and as they strolled back along the northern bank of the Landwehrkanal it seemed as if most of Berlin had had the same idea. Effi had arranged to meet her older sister Zarah for lunch, something she often did when Russell was seeing his son. He had never particularly liked Zarah, who had none of Effi’s fitful ability to look beyond herself, and had married an ambitious Nazi civil servant. Soon after Russell met Effi, she had asked his help in arranging an abortion for Zarah in England, which he had done. Zarah had traveled to London, decided at the last moment she couldn’t go through with it, and had eventually given birth to a boy. Much to everyone’s surprise, she had doted on the child from day one. Much to Russell’s annoyance, she blamed him for the fact that she had nearly had an abortion.

  After he and Effi parted, Russell caught a 76 tram outside the zoo for Grunewald, and watched the houses grow bigger as it worked its way through Halensee and into Berlin’s prosperous southwestern suburbs. Paul’s school was a five-minute walk from the tram terminus, and just down the road from the large tree-shrouded villa which his stepfather Matthias Gehrts had inherited from his father. Both school and villa backed onto one of the small lakes which dotted the area, and sitting on a low wall besides the school gates, Russell had occasional glimpses of sailboats between buildings. A couple of women arrived on foot to pick up their sons, but his fellow dads all arrived in cars, and stood around discussing the reliability of their mechanics.

  The Jungvolk appeared soon after one, buttoning their overcoats over their uniforms as they walked to the gate. Paul half-ran to greet him, a big smile on his face.

  “So where shall we go today?” Russell asked.

  “The Funkturm.”

  “Again?” They had visited Berlin’s radio tower at least half a dozen times in 1938.

  “I like it there.”

  “Okay. Let’s get a tram then. Do you want me to carry that?” he asked, indicating the large book his son was holding.

  “We’ll take turns,” Paul decided.

  “What is it?’ Russell asked.

  “It’s the yearbook,” Paul said, holding it out.

  The Hitler Youth Yearbook, Russell realized, as he skimmed through the pages. There were 500 of them. “So what did you do today?”

  “The same as usual to begin with. Roll-call and gymnastics and then the history lesson—that was all about Germania and the Romans and how most history people get it wrong about them. They think the Romans were civilized and the Germans were barbarians, but in fact it was the other way round—the Romans got mixed up with other races and got soft and lazy and forgot how to fight but the Germans stayed German and that made them strong.” They reached the tram stop just as a tram squealed to a halt. “And after the history lesson,” Paul went on, once they were in their seats, “we did some work on the map wall—remember?—we’re doing a whole wall of maps of Germany from the beginning to now. It’s beginning to look really good.” He looked out the window. “There’s a shop down here that sells model soldiers, and they’ve got the new set of dead soldiers. Someone at school brought them in. They’re really real.”

  They would be, Russell thought. Death and toys, the German specialties.

  “If they’d come out before Christmas, I’d have them now,” Paul said wistfully.

  They reached Halensee Station and climbed down the steps to the Ringbahn platform. “And then we had a talk from this old man,” Paul said, as they watched an electric train pull away from the opposite platform and accelerate down the cutting. “Quite old, anyway. He was much more than forty. He came to talk about the last war and what it was like. He said there weren’t many aeroplanes or tanks, and there was lots of hand-to-hand fighting. Is that true?”

  “There was some. Depends what he meant by lots.”

  “I think he meant it was happening all the time.” Paul looked up at Russell. “I didn’t believe a lot of the things he said. I mean, he said that the best thing a soldier could do was to die for his country. And one of the boys in the back asked him if he was sorry that he hadn’t died, and the man didn’t reply. The boy was told to report to the leader’s room after the talk, and he looked
pretty sick when he came out.”

  “Did they give him a whacking?”

  “No, I think they just shouted at him. He wasn’t trying to be clever—he’s just a bit stupid.”

  Their train pulled in, and Paul spent the single stop ride staring out of the window at the skeletal Funkturm rising out of the tangle of railways. Finished in 1926, it looked like a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower, which probably galled the Nazis to no end. “The elevator’s going up,” Paul said, and they watched it climb toward the viewing platform 126 meters above the ground.

  Fifteen minutes later they were waiting at the bottom for their own ride. One lift carried them to the restaurant level, 55 meters up, another to the circular walkway with its panoramic view of the city. The viewing platform was crowded, children lining up to use the coin-operated binoculars. Russell and his son worked their way slowly round, gazing out beyond the borders of the city at the forests and lakes to the southwest, the plains to the north and east. The Olympic Stadium loomed close by to the west, and Berlin’s two other high buildings—the office tower of the Borsig locomotive works and the futuristic Shellhaus—both seemed closer than usual in the clear air. As tradition demanded, once Paul got his hands on the binoculars he turned them toward the northern suburb of Gesundbrunnen, where Hertha’s flag was fluttering above the roof of the Plumpe’s solitary grandstand. “Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC!” he chanted underneath his breath.