Zoo Stationee

by David Downing

  In the restaurant below they both ordered macaroni, ham, and cheese—washed down, in Paul’s case, with a bottle of Coca Cola.

  “Would you like to see New York?” Russell asked, following a thread of thought that had begun on the viewing platform.

  “Oh yes,” Paul said. “It must be fantastic. The Empire State Building is more than three times as high as this, and it has a viewing platform right near the top.”

  “We could stay with your grandmother.”

  “When?”

  “A few years yet. When you finish school, maybe.”

  Paul’s face fell. “There’ll be a war before then.”

  “Who says so?”

  Paul looked at him with disbelief. “Everybody does.”

  “Sometimes everybody’s wrong.”

  “Yes, but. . . .” He blew into his straw, making the Coke bubble and fizz. “Dad,” he began, and stopped.

  “What?”

  “When you were in the war, did you want to die for England?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Russell was suddenly conscious of the people at the tables nearby. This was not a conversation to have in public.

  “Did you want to fight at all?”

  “Let’s go back up top,” Russell suggested.

  “Okay,” Paul agreed, but only after he’d given Russell one of those looks which suggested he should try harder at being a normal father.

  They took the elevator once more, and found an empty stretch of rail on the less-popular side, looking away from the city. Down to their left an S-bahn train was pulling out of the Olympic Stadium station.

  “I didn’t want to fight,” Russell began, after pausing to marshal his thoughts. “I didn’t volunteer—I was conscripted. I could have refused, and probably gone to prison instead, but I wasn’t certain enough about my feelings to do that. I thought maybe I was just afraid, and that I was hiding behind my opinions. But once I got to the trenches it was different. There were a few idiots who still believed in death and glory, but most of us knew that we’d been conned. All the governments were telling their soldiers that they had God and right on their side, and that dying for their country was the least they could do, but . . . well, think about it—what does it mean, dying for your country? What exactly is your country? The buildings and the grass and the trees? The people? The way of life? People say you should love your country and be proud of it, and there are usually things to love and be proud of. But there are usually things to dislike as well, and every country has things to be ashamed of. So what does dying for your country achieve? Nothing, as far as I could see. Living for your country, you get the chance to make it better.” He looked at his son, whose expression was almost fierce.

  “Our leader says that people who don’t want to fight are cowards.”

  “I expect some of them are. But . . . you remember the Boer War in South Africa, between the English and the Boers? Well, the Indian nationalist leader Gandhi, he was a leader of the Indians in South Africa then, and he refused to fight. Instead he organized medical teams which helped the wounded on the battlefield. He and his people were always in the thick of the action, and lots of them were killed. They wouldn’t fight, but they were about as far from cowards as you can get.”

  Paul looked thoughtful.

  “But I wouldn’t say anything like that at a Jungvolk meeting,” Russell went on, suddenly conscious of the yearbook he was carrying. “You’d just get yourself in trouble. Think about things, and decide what you think is right, but keep it to yourself, or the family at least. These are dangerous times we’re living in, and a lot of people are frightened of people who don’t think like they do. And frightened people tend to lash out.”

  “But if you know something’s wrong, isn’t it cowardly to just keep quiet?”

  This was what Russell was afraid of. How could you protect children from the general idiocy without putting them at risk? “It can be,” he said carefully. “But there’s not much point picking a fight if you know you’re bound to lose. Better to wait until you have some chance of winning. The important thing is not to lose sight of what is right and what is wrong. You may not be able to do anything about it at the time, but nothing lasts forever. You’ll get a chance eventually.”

  Paul gave him a grown-up look, as if he knew full well that Russell was talking as much about himself as his son.

  WITH TIME TO BURN, Russell took the long tram ride back down Ku’damm, spent a couple of hours over dinner in a bar, and then went in search of a movie to watch. The new U-boat drama was showing at the Alhambra, a Zara Leander weepie at the Ufa Palast, and an American Western at the Universum. He chose the latter and reached his seat just as the weekly newsreel was getting started. A rather beautiful piece on Christmas markets in the Rhineland was followed by lots of thunderous marching and a German volleyball triumph in Romania. Suitably uplifted, the audience noisily enjoyed the Western, which almost made up in spectacle what it lacked in every other department.

  Effi’s audience had gone home by the time he reached the theater on Nurnbergstrasse, and he only had to wait a few minutes for her to emerge from the dressing rooms. She had forgotten to eat anything between the matinee and evening shows, and was starving. They walked to a new bar on the Ku’damm which one of the new Valkyries had told her served the most incredible omelettes.

  They were indeed incredible, but the male clientele, most of whom seemed to be in uniform, left a lot to be desired. Four SS men took a neighboring table soon after their food arrived, and grew increasingly vocal with each round of schnapps. Russell could almost feel their need for a target take shape.

  Effi was telling him about Zarah’s latest neurosis—her sister was increasingly worried that her infant son was a slow learner—when the first comments were directed at their table. One of the SS men had noticed Effi’s Jewish looks and loudly remarked on the fact to his companions. He was only about twenty, Russell thought, and when he succeeded in catching the young man’s eye, he had the brief satisfaction of seeing a hint of shame in the way the man quickly looked away.

  By this time Effi was rifling through her purse. Finding what she was looking for, and ignoring him, she stood up, advanced on the SS table, and held the fragebogen up to them, rather in the manner of a school-teacher lecturing a bunch of particularly obtuse children. “See this, you morons,” she said, loud enough for the whole bar to hear. “Aryan descent, all the way back to Luther’s time. Satisfied?”

  The manager was already at her shoulder. “Fraulein, please. . . .” he began.

  “I want these drunken pigs thrown out,” she told him.

  The oldest of the SS men was also on his feet. “I would advise you to be careful, fraulein,” he said. “You may not be a Jew, but that doesn’t give you the right to insult members of the Führer’s bodyguard.”

  Effi ignored him. “Are you going to throw these pigs out?” she asked the manager.

  He looked mortified. “I. . . .”

  “Very well. You won’t get any more business from me. Or any of my friends. I hope,” she concluded with one last contemptuous glance at the SS, “that you can make a living selling swill to these pigs.”

  She headed for the door, as Russell, half-amused and half-fearful, counted out a few marks for their meal and listened to the SS men argue about whether to arrest her. When one of them took a step toward the door he blocked the way. “You did call her a Jew,” he said mildly, looking straight at the oldest man. “Surely you can understand how upsetting that might be. She meant no disrespect.”

  The man gave him a slight bow of the head. “She would do well to control her anger a little better,” he said coldly.

  “She would,” Russell agreed. “Have a good evening,” he added, and turned toward the door.

  Outside he found Effi shaking with laughter, though whether from humor or hysteria he wasn’t quite sure. He put an arm around her shoulder and waited for the shaking to stop. “Let’s go home.”

  “Let’s,” she agreed.

  They crossed the busy avenue and headed up one of the side streets.

  “Some
times I wish I was a Jew,” she said. “If the Nazis hate them that much, they must be real human beings.”

  Russell grunted his acquiescence. “I heard a joke the other day,” he said. “Hitler goes rowing on the Wannsee, but he’s not very good at it, and manages to overturn the boat. A boy in a passing boat manages to haul him out and save him from drowning. Hitler, as you can imagine, is overcome with gratitude and promises the boy whatever he wants. The boy thinks for a moment, and asks for a state funeral. Hitler says, ‘You’re a bit young for that, aren’t you?’ The boy says, ‘Oh, mein Führer, when I tell my dad I’ve saved you from drowning he’s going to kill me!’”

  Effi started laughing again, and he did too. For what seemed like minutes they stood on the sidewalk, embracing and shaking with mirth.

  NEXT AFTERNOON THOMAS AND JOACHIM were waiting in the usual place, sitting on a low wall with cartons of half-consumed frankfurters and kartoffelsalad between them. Russell bought the same for himself and Paul.

  Once inside the Plumpe they headed for their usual spot, opposite the edge of the penalty area, halfway up the terrace on the western side. As their two sons read each other’s magazines, Russell and Thomas sat themselves down on the concrete step and chatted. “How’s business?” Russell asked.

  “It’s good,” Thomas said, unbuttoning his overcoat. He’d been running the family paper business since his and Ilse’s father had died a few years earlier. “It’s getting harder to find experienced staff, but other than that. . . .” He shrugged. “There’s no lack of orders. How about you?”

  “Not too bad. I’ve got the opening of the new Chancellery tomorrow, and there should be a decent piece in that—the Americans like that sort of thing.”

  “Well that’s good. How about Danzig? Did you get anything there?”

  “Not really.” Russell explained about the stamp wars.

  Thomas rolled his eyes in frustration. “Like children,” he muttered. “Speaking of which, Joachim’s been called up for his arbeitsdienst.”

  “When?”

  “The beginning of March.”

  Russell looked up at Joachim, engrossed in his magazine. “Ah,” he said, glad that Paul was still six years away from the year of drilling, draining swamps, and digging roads which the Nazis imposed on all seventeen-year-old boys. “How does he feel about it?”

  “Oh, he can’t wait,” Thomas said, glancing affectionately up at his son. “I suppose it can’t do him any harm. Unlike what’ll probably follow.”

  Russell knew what he meant. When they’d first become friends over ten years ago, he and Thomas had talked a lot about their experiences in the war. Both had friends who’d survived the war in body, yet never recovered their peace of mind. And both knew that they themselves had been changed in ways that they would never fully understand. And that they had been the lucky ones.

  “Happy days,” Russell murmured, and then laughed. “We had a run-in with the SS last night,” he said, and told Thomas the story.

  He wasn’t as amused as Russell expected. “She’ll go too far one of these days. The fragebogen’s just a piece of paper, after all. One day they’ll take her in, tear it up, and the next thing you know her parents will be getting a bill for her burial.” He shook his head. “Being right doesn’t count anymore.”

  “I know,” Russell said. “She knows. But she does it so well.”

  A chorus of catcalls erupted around them: Viktoria Berlin were on their way out. As the two men got to their feet, Hertha emerged to a more affectionate welcome. Casting his eyes over the towering grandstand and the high crowded terraces behind each goal, Russell felt the usual surge of excitement. Glancing to his left, he saw that Paul’s eyes mirrored his own.

  The first half was all Hertha, but Viktoria scored the only goal on a breakaway just before the interval. Joachim seethed with indignation, while Paul yo-yoed between hope and anxiety. Thomas smoked two cigarettes.

  The second half followed the same pattern, and there were only ten minutes left when Hertha’s inside-left was tripped in the penalty area. He took the penalty himself. The ball hit both posts before going in, leaving the crowd in hysterics. A minute from time, with evening falling and the light abruptly fading, Hertha’s center-forward raced onto a long bouncing ball and volleyed it home from almost thirty yards. The Viktoria goalkeeper hadn’t moved. As the stadium exploded with joy he just stood there, making angry gestures at his teammates, the referee, the rest of the world.

  Paul was ecstatic. Eyes shining, he joined in the chant now echoing round the arena: “Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC! Ha! Ho! He! Hertha BSC!”

  For an eleven-year-old, Russell thought fondly, this was as good as it got.

  IT WAS DARK BY the time he dropped Paul off. He took a 76 back into town, ate supper at a beer restaurant just off the Potsdamerplatz, and walked the last kilometer home. Reaching his street, he noticed what looked like the same empty car parked across from his apartment block. He was on his way to investigate it when he heard the scream.

  It was no ordinary scream. It was loud and lingering, and it somehow managed to encompass surprise, terror, and appalling pain. For a brief instant, Russell was back in the trenches, listening to someone who’d just lost a limb to a shell.

  It came from further down the street.

  He hesitated, but only long enough for his brain to register that hesitation as an essential corollary of living in Nazi Germany. All too often, screams meant officialdom, and experience suggested that officialdom was best avoided at such moments.

  Still, investigating one seemed a legitimate practice, even in Nazi Germany. Not all crimes were committed by the state or its supporters. Russell walked resolutely on past the courtyard which his block shared with its neighbor, telling himself that valor was the better part of discretion.

  The source of the disturbance was the further of the two blocks off the next courtyard. A couple of men were hovering in the entrance, obviously uncertain what to do. They eyed Russell nervously, and looked at each other when he asked them what was going on. Both were in their forties, and an obvious facial similarity suggested brothers.

  In the courtyard beyond, an open-backed truck was parked with its engine running, and a single man in an SA uniform was walking toward them.

  “Keep moving,” he told them, without any real conviction. His breath stank of beer.

  “But we live here,” one of the two men said.

  “Just wait there, then,” the stormtrooper said, looking up at the illuminated windows on the third floor. “You might get some free entertainment,” he added over his shoulder as he walked back toward the truck.

  Seconds later, another bloodcurdling scream reverberated round the courtyard.

  “What in God’s name . . . ?” Russell began. “Who lives up there?” he asked the two men.

  “Two actors,” the older of the two replied.

  “Warmer brüder,” the other added, hot brothers, the current slang for homosexuals. “They’ve been brazen as hell. Someone must have denounced them.” He didn’t sound too upset about it.

  No other lights were showing in either block, but Russell could almost feel the silent audience watching from behind the tiers of darkened windows. He thought about calling the police, but knew there was no point.

  One of the illuminated windows was suddenly flung open, and a man appeared silhouetted against the opening, looking out and down. A crying, whimpering sound was now audible, and just as the man disappeared another scream split the night, even more piercing than the last. There was a flurry of movement inside the lighted room, and suddenly a naked body was flying out through the window, dropping, screaming, hitting the floor of the courtyard with a sickening, silencing thud. The body twitched once and lay still, as desperate, sobbing pleas of “no, please, no” leaked out of the open window. Another flurry, another naked body, this one twisting in flight like an Olympic diver who’d mistaken concrete for water. There was no twitch this time, no last-second adjustment to death.

  The two lay a couple of feet apart, in the thin pool of light thrown by the block’s en
trance lamp. One man was face down, the other face up, with only a glistening mess where his genitals had been.