Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  It was a three-kilometre hike through the S-Bahn tunnels to Friedrichstrasse. As Russell walked northward many slivers of light – even beams in places – shone down through the cut-and-cover ceiling. This evidence of bomb and shell damage didn’t inspire much confidence in the integrity of the tunnel, but the thin grey light allowed him to walk at his usual pace, and it only took about twenty minutes to reach the S-Bahn platforms underneath Potsdam Station. These were lined with people, most still sleeping, others staring listlessly into space. No one seemed surprised by his appearance in the borrowed Reichsbahn uniform, but he stopped to take a close look at the track in several places, as he had once seen a real official do. Up above, the Soviet artillery seemed unusually fierce, and one near-miss caused a shower of dust to descend from the ceiling. A few heads were anxiously raised, but most people hardly stirred.

  The next section was the worst. As he moved north, the smell of human waste grew stronger in his nostrils; a little further on, and he was picking up the metallic odour of blood. The stationary hospital trains had only just become visible in the distance when he heard the first scream, and not long after that the lower, more persistent groaning of the wounded soldiers on board became increasingly audible. It sounded like Babelsberg’s idea of a slave’s chorus, only the pain was real.

  The trains seemed barely lit, and there was no way of knowing what sort of care their passengers were getting. The only person Russell saw was a young and rather pretty nurse, who was seated on some vestibule steps, puffing on a cigarette. She looked up when she heard him coming, and gave him a desolate smile.

  The tunnel soon curved to the right. He guessed it passed under the Adlon Hotel, where he’d spent so many hours of his pre-war working life. He wondered if the building was still standing.

  Unter den Linden Station suggested otherwise. Large chunks of sky were visible in several places, and no one was using the rubble-strewn platforms for shelter. By contrast, the long curve round towards Friedrichstrasse was the darkest section so far, and when he heard music drifting down the tunnel he thought he must be imagining it. But not for long. For one thing, it grew steadily louder; for another, it was jazz.

  As he reached the Friedrichstrasse platforms he could hear the music quite clearly: the players were somewhere close by in the subterranean complex beneath the main-line station. Many of those camping out on the platforms were obviously enjoying it, feet tapping to the rhythm, smiles on their faces. He had seen nothing stranger in six years of war. Or more heartening.

  He followed several corridors to reach the U-Bahn booking hall. The trains were still running all the way to See Strasse, which seemed another small miracle – the terminus couldn’t be that far from the front line. Russell waited while a woman pleaded in vain for permission to travel – her eighty-five-year-old mother was alone in her Wedding apartment, and needed help to get out before the Russians arrived. The man on the barrier was sympathetic but adamant – only people with official red passes were allowed on the trains. As she walked despairingly away Russell flashed the one that Leissner had loaned him, and hurried down to the U-Bahn platforms.

  He needn’t have bothered. The trains might be running, but not with any regularity, and if the rats playing between the tracks were any judge, an arrival wasn’t imminent. When a train did arrive an hour or so later, the front four carriages were already packed with old-looking soldiers, presumably en route to the front. Russell squeezed into one of the others, almost losing his Reichsbahn cap in the mêlée.

  The train must have stopped a dozen times in the tunnels between stations, and on each occasion Russell feared an announcement that it would go no further. He and his fellow-passengers were finally told as much after the train had sat at the Wedding platform for almost half an hour. This was not the nearest station to Prinz Eugen Strasse, but it was not that far away. As he walked up the platform towards the exit he noticed that the Volkssturm were not getting off, and that the front half of the train was being uncoupled for further progress up the line.

  As he climbed the stairs towards street level the sounds of the war grew louder, and by the time he emerged onto Müller Strasse it was clear that the fighting front could only be a few kilometres away. The sudden detonation of several artillery shells a few hundred metres up the street was encouraging, implying, as it did, that no Soviet units had yet penetrated the area. The last thing Russell wanted to meet was a T-34.

  Haste, he decided, was probably more important than caution. He walked swiftly up the eastern side of Müller Strasse, conscious of how empty this part of the city seemed. Most people would be in their basements, he supposed, just waiting for the Russians. Those still working in the city centre would be sleeping in their offices, not commuting through shellfire.

  As he crossed Gericht Strasse he caught a glimpse of the Humboldthain flak towers, which had still been under construction when he left Berlin. The main tower was giving and receiving fire, its guns pumping shells towards the distant suburbs, while incoming Soviet rounds exploded on impact with the thick concrete walls to little apparent effect. The whole edifice was wreathed in smoke, like a wizard’s castle.

  He took the next turning, and soon reached the intersection with Prinz Eugen Strasse. The block containing the apartment that Effi had rented as a possible bolthole was down to the right. Or had been. There was only a field of rubble there now. The neighbouring block had lost an entire wall, leaving several storeys of rooms open to the air, but Effi’s had been razed to the ground. And not recently, Russell realised with some dismay. He was sure she’d come back here, but how long had she stayed?

  Each pair of blocks had its own shelter, he remembered. As he strode along the street to the next entrance, a shell exploded behind a block on the other side, throwing what looked like half a tree into the air. He broke into a run, reaching the shelter of a courtyard just as another shell landed somewhere behind him. Taking the steps to the shelter two at a time, he suddenly found himself the object of numerous stares.

  The Reichsbahn uniform was obviously reassuring, and most of the shelter’s occupants wasted no time in returning to what they’d been doing. One old woman continued smiling at him for no apparent reason, so he walked across to her.

  ‘My husband used to wear that uniform,’ she told him.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And before you ask – no, he wasn’t killed in this war. He didn’t live to see it, the lucky old sod.’

  Russell laughed, then remembered why he was there. ‘Can you tell me when the block across the street was bombed?’ he asked.

  ‘Autumn of ’43,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the month. Did you know someone who lived there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one survived, I’m afraid. The whole building came down, and went right through the basement ceiling. They were digging for days, but they didn’t find anyone alive.’

  Russell felt cold spreading across his chest, as if his heart was a heat-pump and someone had just switched it off. He told himself that she’d probably moved out long before, that the Effi he knew would never have settled for simply waiting out the war. She had to be alive. Had to be.

  He went back up to the street, and began retracing his steps towards Wedding Station. Shells were now landing several blocks to the north, which was just as well, because he was in the mood for tempting fate. If she was gone, then Berlin could have him splashed across its walls.

  But he couldn’t really believe that she was. And if she wasn’t, then how the hell was he going to find her? Where else could he go, who else could he ask?

  As he approached the station he suddenly remembered Uwe Kuzorra, the police detective who had helped him escape in 1941, and who lived only half an hour’s walk away. He would have access to state records, to lists of bomb victims, and of those arrested.

  No, Russell told himself. If Kuzorra was still working for the police, he wouldn’t be at home. And if he wasn’t, then he wouldn’t be able to help. There was no poin
t.

  Heading underground once more, he wondered who else he could go to. The only person he could think of was Jens. At least he knew that Jens was still in Berlin. He might know something, and if Russell had to beat it out of him, he was more than willing to do so.

  The train at the platform eventually pulled out, but had only reached Oranienburger Strasse when its journey was abruptly cut short. Russell had sometimes used this stop when visiting the Blumenthals in 1941, and felt a pang at the memory. Martin and Leonore were almost certainly dead, but their daughter Ali had always said she would rather go underground than accept a Gestapo invitation to the east. If she had, she might still be alive. There had been a lot of decent ‘aryans’ in Berlin before the war, and Russell was willing to bet that some would have offered their Jewish friends a helping hand.

  Two other memories caught up with him as he walked down the stretch of Friedrichstrasse that lay between the Spree and the railway bridge. First he came to Siggi’s Bar, half in ruins and boarded over; it was there that he’d waited for Effi on that terrible evening, believing that he’d never see her or Paul again. And there, on the other side of the street, was the model shop that he and Paul had often visited, with the proprietor who never tired of talking about his customer, the Reichsmarschal. That too was boarded up, and so, Russell guessed, was Goering’s hunting lodge out at Karinhall, where the Reich’s largest model railway was reputedly laid out. Perhaps the Russians were out there now, playing with the trains. Or perhaps they’d shipped them home to Stalin.

  There was no music playing beneath Friedrichstrasse Station, which was something of a disappointment. Down in the tunnel there was nothing to distract him from thoughts of Effi, and the possibility that she had died in Prinz Eugen Strasse. There was not even consolation in the certainty of a quick death – she might have been under the rubble for days.

  The hospital trains gave him something else to think about. He remembered that Leissner had talked about a possible flooding of the tunnels, and wondered if any provision had been made for an emergency evacuation of the wounded. Knowing the SS, he doubted it.

  Back at their hideaway in the abandoned station, Varennikov looked up from the book he was reading by candlelight. ‘No luck,’ he deduced from Russell’s expression.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the Russian said in a heartfelt tone. ‘I don’t know how I’d survive without my Irina.’

  Dawn brought a quickening of the long range artillery attacks, but Paul’s area around the Schulenburg Bridge only received a couple of hits. Most of the shells were falling far behind them, on the Old Town, the government quarter and the West End. Either Ivan was having a particularly inaccurate morning, or he was saving the more obvious military targets for when his infantry was poised and waiting on the other side of the canal.

  Sent in search of something to eat by his fellow-excavators, Paul ran into soldiers from his own division. There were about forty of them in the immediate vicinity, a lieutenant told him. Their situation had been reported, he said, but they hadn’t yet received any new instructions. Until they did, it seemed wisest – he nodded his head in the direction of the SS officer who seemed in overall charge of the Schulenburg Bridge position – to follow the orders of those on the spot.

  A mess had been set up in the underground booking hall of the Grenzallee station. It was staffed by local volunteers, women in their forties and fifties with gaunt faces and dead eyes. A huge tureen of soup was all they had to offer, but it smelled and tasted good – the ingredients, one women told him in a whisper – had come from the Karstadt department store on Hermann Strasse, two kilometres up the road. The SS in charge of the adjoining warehouse had been cajoled into releasing some supplies for the fighting men at the front.

  Back in the cemetery, Paul shared out the contents of his billycan. There had been a handbill delivery in his absence, and he read through one as he ate. Hitler, it seemed, was actually in Berlin, and still directing the military traffic. And General Wenck was on his way to relieve the capital. According to the Führer Order reprinted as part of the leaflet, ‘Wenck’s Army’ had been summoned to Berlin’s aid, and was now approaching the city. ‘Berlin is waiting for you! Berlin longs for you with all its heart!’ the order concluded. It sounded like some idiot hero in a Babelsberg weepie.

  Paul didn’t believe a word of it, and could hardly bear the look of hope on Werner’s face.

  A couple of hours later, a passing corporal filled them in on the latest news. The Soviet shelling, unlike the Allied air raids which preceded it, was more or less continuous, and those Berliners that could had taken up more-or-less permanent residence in underground shelters of one sort or another. After two whole days of this many had begun to wonder where their food would come from when present supplies ran out. It was no great secret where the authorities had stored the ration supplies, and that morning crowds had gathered outside many of the relevant premises, invading and looting those that were insufficiently guarded.

  At the Karstadt department store on Hermann Strasse, the SS were in charge, and seemed intent on blowing up the building rather than leave the Russians such a treasure trove of supplies. The people of Neukölln had turned up en masse, and been grudgingly permitted a few hours to cart away all of the food. Some had taken the opportunity to seize less edible ware, like silk dresses and fur coats, but Karstadt staff had guarded the doors and taken such items back. Having their stock reduced to rubble was obviously preferable to giving it away.

  ‘And there’s a big drive on to round up deserters,’ the talkative corporal added. ‘It started this morning. There are roadblocks everywhere, and gangs of the black bastards are going round the basements. Those they find, they hang, so I advise you all to wait here for Ivan.’

  He laughed at his own joke, re-lit the stump of his cigarette, and wandered off down the cemetery path.

  It wouldn’t be long, Paul thought. Looking around, he could see smoke rising in every direction. Soon this cemetery would erupt all around them, throwing up old corpses, sucking in new. Berlin was waiting for an army all right, but it wasn’t Wenck’s.

  It was mid-afternoon when a private came to fetch him. The largest remnant of his division was deployed four kilometres to the east, where the road to Mariendorf and Lichtenrade crossed over the same canal, and he and his fellow stragglers were to join it at once. The assembly point was outside the Grenzallee U-Bahn station.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ Paul said, stabbing his spade into the earth.

  ‘Can I come too?’ Werner asked. ‘Where you’re going is only a few kilometres from my house.’

  The SS on the bridge might argue, but only if someone was foolish enough to ask them. ‘Okay’, he told the boy. After wishing the tank team luck they left the cemetery by the back gate, and worked their through the side streets to the station, where thirty-odd men were scattered across the staircase leading down to the booking hall. The lieutenant looked twice at Werner, but said nothing.

  There was no transport, but it was only an hour’s march, and still light enough outside for vehicles to be something of a mixed blessing.

  The lieutenant fell them in and sent them off in pairs, keeping a decent distance between them to minimise the damage a single shell might do. The first street they walked down was almost intact, but the hospital district on the other side of the Britzer Damm had been almost obliterated, and the area of small streets which lay between the canal and the Tempelhof aerodrome was in equally terrible shape. There were ruins and rubble everywhere, and no sign that anyone was interested in clearing anything up. The few adults they passed looked either angry and resentful or listless and indifferent; the only child they encountered ran alongside them firing an imaginary gun and making the appropriate noises, until Paul felt like shooting him.

  It was getting dark by the time they reached the Berliner Chaussee, and another long hour was spent waiting in the deepening cold while the lieutenant sought out the divisional HQ. He foun
d it in the basement of a factory which overlooked the canal basin just east of the Stubenrauch Bridge. The remnants of the division – all 130 of them – were deployed in and around the basin, mostly in other industrial buildings. The division’s last four artillery pieces were well dug in and camouflaged, ready for the Soviet onslaught. Paul had been hoping to find a place with one of them, but there was already a waiting list. At least ten men had to die before he got his old job back, and only then if the gun survived its minders.

  Still, there was food enough, and old acquaintances to pass the time with. Not everyone had died. Not yet.

  The Hitlerjugend held his watch up to the kerosene lamp. ‘It’s after nine,’ he told Effi.

  She’d lost track of the time, something easy to do in what smelt and felt like the bowels of the earth. She could no longer hear or see the war, but the constant turnover of casualties was proof enough of its continuance. The smell of fresh blood had been with her all day.

  The shift had lasted twelve hours. She was working as a nursing assistant, her uniform a bloodstained apron, her tasks mostly menial – fetching and carrying, boiling instruments, cleaning what had to be cleaned with water collected from the pumps outside. Her only close contact with patients lay in bandaging the wounded and trying to comfort the dying.

  Rosa had been with her throughout, sometimes helping but mostly just drawing. Effi had no idea what mental and emotional havoc was being wreaked on the already traumatised seven-year-old, but she didn’t dare let her out of her sight. She told herself that watching people so intent on saving life must surely have a positive effect, but she didn’t really believe it.