The Weather in Berlin

by Ward Just

  Yes, of course, Greenwood said.

  Please, Anya said.

  I must go, Karen said abruptly. I have a fitting.

  I will get my albums, Frau Munn said.

  Karen gathered her things and thanked Greenwood for lunch. The Vietnamese was attentive, she said. You must leave him a good tip.

  In dollars, Greenwood said, but Karen was already striding out the door.

  Willa watched her go. When Frau Munn appeared again, bearing three thick leather-bound albums, stacking them on the table, opening the first for their inspection, they leaned in close. Frau Munn began to describe the war years, the difficulty of maintaining the café while Allied bombs were falling. The regulars were loyal but there were fewer each night. All of us were frightened and trying so hard not to show it. Each night we pulled on masks to hide our fears. We wore clowns’ faces and the more we drank the crazier we became, singing and dancing as if each night was our last. You never heard such laughter. My café was a favorite of musicians—she turned a page, a girlish Frau Munn with a slender black-haired woman in a tuxedo holding a clarinet—and often after hours we would play swing music, Kurt Weill’s songs, “Bilbao Song” and the others. And if someone from the Gestapo came in, the band would switch to a march. But if you listened carefully you could hear syncopation, and the melody just off key. She slowly turned page after page, the musicians yielding to American army officers, officers to civilians, and always in the background attractive, threadbare young women smiling with an irony beyond words, the smiles plastered on their faces like masks.

  So we survived, Frau Munn said.

  So many nights, she went on, I thought we wouldn’t.

  The date above your door, Dix said. It reads 1945.

  You noticed, Frau Munn said softly, her lisp suddenly pronounced. A new time for Germany, a new time for the Café also.

  She went away, the albums in her arms appearing as heavy as anvils.

  Dix looked at Willa, who put more money on the bill.

  I know where the audience has gone, Dixon, she said.

  9

  WILLA DROVE, Dix sat beside her. Anya and Karen were in the rear seat, Karen dozing. Willa was enumerating the name changes of the great boulevard as it ran due east from Berlin to the Oder, and Poland beyond the Oder. The names went by so quickly that Dix could not acquire them except for the last two, Stalin Allee and Karl-Marx-Allee, the last decreed by the authorities after Khrushchev declared Dzugashvili persona non grata in the Soviet experiment. When the Wall came down and East Germany ceased to exist, Karl-Marx-Allee remained; Marx was German after all, long dead and harmless. Dix was watching the street, straight as a ruler and wide as an airplane runway, no coincidence, concrete apartment buildings on either side with an esplanade in the middle, an appalling public space with the aspect of the exercise yard of a penitentiary. Now and then he would find a face at a window, an elderly inhabitant standing motionless, staring into the street watching the traffic and loose paper flying above the gutters and sidewalks. Dix wondered if the apathetic faces at the windows were Willa’s audience, the dispossessed and left behind, the ones waiting for the next tick of the clock. The rented black Mercedes was conspicuous among the Trabants and Opels and heavy Man trucks. Willa talked on and on, identifying this building and that, her voice sardonic when she pointed out an installation important to Soviet state security, now derelict behind rusting iron gates. Dix’s attention began to wander, then lapse altogether.

  Willa was a fast driver. They were quit of Berlin now, hurtling past towns that got smaller each mile, dour clusters of buildings frozen under a dim prewar sun. This Germany was a different nation from the Germany to the west. This one was agrarian, and in its rundown simplicity seemed from another era. Dix had the sense of leaving one Europe for another. This one had more in common with Poland and Russia, the land flat and stubborn, life guided by the heavy hands of the Church or the Party. But he saw no churches nor any evidence of commerce. A nation without offices or factories, and in the towns no markets. They passed a Gypsy caravan by the side of the road and a little farther on an abandoned, looted military barracks behind a thicket of barbed wire. The towns had the look of small towns in the Dakotas, a few old people carrying cloth satchels, and no children at all. The taverns that marked each town square were dark. The squares were very different from those in Britain and France and Dix did not know why, until he noticed the absence of war memorials—a stalwart infantryman or a general on horseback or a simple obelisk with its row of names. Died for King and Country. Mort pour la France. Probably there were memorials to the Soviet dead but they were out of sight. Here and there were barns and houses in disrepair, rusted bits of machinery in the fields. The houses looked inhabited but it was hard to know for sure; there were no specific signs of life. He felt he was watching the opening frames of a film from the 1930s, some German cousin of The Grapes of Wrath. What was visible had no obvious narrative and Dix concluded that in this region life flourished behind closed doors or underground or deep in a collective subconscious, at any event out of sight of the casual traveler. The linden trees by the side of the road were stunted but robust against the horizon. The raw fallow fields rolled off the horizon and ended, as if the horizon line marked the limits of the known world.

  Welcome to Prussia, Willa said.

  Where are the people?

  They’re around, Willa said.

  No children, either.

  Children go to school, even in Germany.

  Touche, Dix murmured.

  You’re not seeing the real Prussia, Willa said. The real Prussia is farther north, in old Pomerania and east into Poland. In the north during the winter it’s so cold you can hear the trees snap. Look beyond the manmade wreckage to the land itself. It’s consoling in its contours, don’t you think? It’s dramatic in its simplicity. Before the war there were huge forests and game everywhere, boar, bear even. My uncle has wonderful stories of hunting in the forests. People had what they needed despite the feudalism. Our socialism got rid of the feudalism, but something was lost, too.

  Ignorance, mostly, Karen snarled from the rear seat.

  Anya stirred and rested her chin on the front seatback between Willa and Dix.

  Willa said, We are transitional people now.

  Provisional, Dix amended, suppressing a smile, wishing that Claire were in the car, listening to Willa’s German voice, mesmerizing as it turned, now forward, now back, orbiting like a satellite that would never know rest, each thought undermining the one before. But still the satellite spun. You are not seeing the real Prussia. To an inhabitant, the visitor was never seeing the real thing. The real Libertyville lay to the west of Milwaukee Avenue. The real Chicago was Bridgeport or Streeterville. The real New York was either downtown or uptown. The real America was always the heartland, though why Illinois was any more real than Massachusetts was a mystery. In Washington they always spoke of “the country” as if it were apart from themselves, as indeed it was, mostly.

  We were only doing our duty, she added.

  Anya said, East German socialism harmed the men. The men lost vitality. The state was vital, the men weren’t vital. They were bullied. They served the state, not their wives or children, not even themselves. They lost themselves to the state. The more brutal they became, the weaker. And in due course, the women followed the men. They felt they had no other choice, such was the way of the world. The East German state coarsened everything it touched, and in the end it collapsed in a day.

  Willa said grimly, That’s the way it seemed in America?

  Not only America, Anya said. I knew East German men. My German Idyll research took me to many libraries in the East, various conferences and discussions.

  Academics, Willa muttered.

  Academics, yes. And writers, lawyers, even Stasi thugs. They liked to keep tabs on me, where I went and who I talked to. From time to time they interrogated me. An interview, they called it. They wanted to know everything I heard. They w
eren’t allowed to travel outside their own country, so you would think they would be interested in the outside world. One is always interested in what is forbidden, isn’t that so? But they had no interest, none at all. I began to think of them as narcissists. They were concerned only with themselves, and the security of the regime.

  Americans have always hated us, Willa said. Americans are obsessed with what the fascists did to the Jews. Yet when the war ended, the Americans befriended the West and rejected the East, along the usual capitalist lines.

  Anya said something in German and Willa said something back, also in German.

  The Americans are hypocrites, Karen said. And now I am going to sleep.

  Sweet dreams, Anya said.

  Tell me more about the men, Dix said.

  Foreigners cannot understand, Willa said. Then, in the awkward silence, she cleared her throat. You understand, Dixon. I was not saying an anti-Semitic thing. Anti-Semitism is far from my own mind. I was only pointing out the contradictions in the American position. And not only the American, but the British and French also.

  The Americans are the worst, Karen said.

  Go back to sleep, Willa said.

  The men, Dix prompted.

  They’re abnormal, Anya said.

  They’re normal men, Willa said.

  They are obsessed with pornography, Anya said loudly.

  Normal men, Willa repeated.

  Bewitched by sex shops, Anya said.

  That is an American obsession, Willa said.

  They are incapable of normal sex.

  You have been in America too long, Anya. You have been brainwashed.

  I was in Berlin when the Wall came down, Anya said. I stayed a week, sharing the enthusiasm. Remember the lines around the block? East German boys come to visit the sex shops near the Zoo station. Boys old enough to be grandfathers, Willa. Busloads of them, and they all stopped at Zoo station because of the sex shops. That was what the West meant to them.

  The women were silent a moment as Willa accelerated to pass an overloaded hay wagon, a teenage boy at the reins of two exhausted horses. He covered his face with his arm as they passed, road grit rising in their wake.

  Not that I am against pornography myself, Anya put in. In its place it is wholesome.

  So, Dix said, searching for a neutral phrase. It sounds like East Germany missed the sexual revolution.

  There was no need for the sexual revolution in the Democratic Republic, Willa said.

  Anya laughed. The 1917 revolution took care of that.

  Men and women got on as they have always gotten on.

  Yes, that is true, Anya said. Without sex shops.

  The sexual revolution was an American invention, Willa went on. And it was a male thing. It was what the men wanted. Isn’t that so, Dixon?

  Not in Los Angeles, Dix said.

  Anya said, Here is one theory. In the East they looked on the state as their Teutonic father, to be obeyed without question. According to Freud, they would have a subconscious desire to murder the tyrant. But it seems that Freud was misinformed because they didn’t want to murder him. They wanted to serve him as a loyal son. The better they served, the more privileges they gained. When I put this thought to one of my academic friends, she said that the East German state reminded her of an American corporation and its destructive paternalism. Fit in or ship out. But there was no place to go, no “out,” except jail or a labor camp or degrading rehabilitation, “reeducation” under the supervision of the authorities. In any case, the men gladly accommodated. Could it be that they did not love their mothers?

  Freud was a charlatan, Willa said. The Viennese, they were all corrupt. They lived in a pornographic dream world. Hitler was Austrian.

  Certainly Freud did not have a place in East Germany, Anya said.

  Willa replied in German, sarcastic agreement from the sound of it.

  It’s my opinion, Anya said.

  Academics are unreliable, Willa said.

  This one was an honored member of the Party, Anya said smoothly. Speaking off the record, of course.

  Poor Germany, Willa said. So misunderstood.

  Dix felt himself surrounded by the scent of women so he cracked the window an inch, causing a rush of frigid air, and a complaint from Anya.

  Dixon? Willa said. You understand what I meant about the anti-Semitism?

  I heard you, Dix said.

  It’s always uncomfortable, isn’t it? It’s not a good conversation. One is always misunderstood, these intimate things, events of so many years ago. It is hard to find a language to express our thoughts, our ordinary words and phrases won’t do. In every language there are words untranslatable into other languages, “heimat” in German, “añoranza” in Spanish. Buchenwald is a suburb of Weimar, as Dachau is a suburb of Munich, and Sachsenhausen of Berlin. “Suburb” seems not the word, yet that is what they are, suburban villages that contained concentration camps. We did not cause the events, but we take responsibility for them, and the responsibility includes the chore of finding the language to express the responsibility. Perhaps it is somewhat true, what Anya said, that we have not taken account of the outside world, not that it was forbidden to us, but . . . She sighed heavily, foundering, tapping the steering wheel with her knuckles. She said, I always tried to take account of it in my work, stage business, a remark or gesture, to let them know that we knew—

  You did? Dix said.

  Allegory, Willa said.

  Allegories related to the Third Reich?

  Certainly, she said.

  The West was trying to destroy us, she went on. So naturally there were resentments, surely you can see that.

  They motored on. Dix scrutinized the monotonous winter landscape through half-lidded eyes. And still in a corner of his mind he saw the faces at the windows that lined Karl-Marx-Allee, the ones waiting for a clock’s tick or a visitor, an audience waiting for the show to begin. When the road entered a copse, the car was suddenly deep shadow. Willa murmured something and Anya laughed softly. Her mouth was only inches from his ear, and he felt her moist breath. They continued back and forth and at length Karen joined in, contributing a rambling anecdote in a sleepy voice. He had the idea they were telling stories of romantic encounters, love gone wrong, love in the afternoon, love lost and found. They were speaking companionably in German, giggling, running into each other’s sentences, breathless with amusement. Dix rested his head against the window, closed his eyes, and fell asleep, their voices feathering away into a kind of hum.

  He was in a forest, the Mercedes parked somewhere behind him. The light was weak. The women had vanished but he knew they were not far away. He was on a path following hunters into the interior, the only sound the crunch of new snow underfoot. It was bitter cold. Dix was in city clothes and the hunters in loden coats and Tyrolean hats with bright feathers spilling from the band. The hunters were familiar to him but he could not identify them in their heavy clothes through the filtered light.

  One of them motioned to him.

  Come along, the hunter said. It’s only a little farther.

  He had been designated an Observer and therefore took careful account of the hunters’ tactics, their deliberate approach, the gestures they used, and the weapons they carried, beautifully tooled twelve-gauge shotguns with walnut stocks and leather slings, heirlooms from the look of them. When the lead hunter raised his hand, the others went into a military crouch, cradling their shotguns in their arms. Small birds darted among the trees, and then he heard rustling nearby, the sound reminding him of polite applause. The lead hunter fired unexpectedly and they all got off shots, wildly it seemed to Dix. Faced with unexpected challenge, they were undisciplined. When they rushed forward, he stayed behind to take stock of things. He heard them blundering along the path, their shouts growing fainter, the explosions ceasing. And then he was standing in silence as the light failed and dusk came on. He took a small notebook from his jacket pocket and began making notes, a detailed account o
f the lapse of discipline, random fire in the distance, men rushing forward without caution. They lacked circumspection. They did not inspire confidence. The leader was hopeless, and then Dix realized he had no idea where he was. He believed he was somewhere beyond the horizon, in the everlasting region with no name or verified history, a place where legends began. There were many such forbidden places in the world, places in books and places in the imagination. He felt himself within a zone of tremendous privacy, and of privilege also to be present where so few had been. He remained a moment longer in a state of enchantment, a city man out of place in a wilderness, but untroubled. He put the notebook away, remembering his responsibilities, the work he had to complete. He heard a noise behind him but ignored it. He believed he was sovereign in this place.

  Come along, the voice said.

  It’s only a little way.

  The voice was unpleasant, harsh in the silence of the wood. Still, he was not afraid, owing to his sovereignty and his assignment: Observer. When he turned to search for his car, he was thrown off balance, seized roughly by the shoulder and thrust ahead into the dense underbrush and abandoned once again. In the distance he thought he saw a cabin, a thin ribbon of smoke rising from its chimney. He could smell the woodsmoke but there were no lights inside the dwelling. Round and about he heard the bursts of shotgun fire and then in a clearing near the cabin he observed the quarry, a small black bear, appearing and vanishing almost at once. Dix followed on, shivering, slipping on the hard ground. He wondered if the bear was real or only a phantom, a kind of spirit-bear that would be native to a region where legends began. The bear was so small he believed it harmless, a circus animal or a pet you would give a child. He was alarmed when it arrived at his side, attempting to stand on its hind legs, a leash hanging from its neck. The cabin receded as the hunters returned, stationing themselves in a semicircle facing him and the bear, the animal defiant now and baring its muzzle in a low growl as the hunters unslung their weapons. He thought if he reached the safety of the cabin he and the bear would find protection. He took a step forward and realized then that the hunters were known to him, the stout one, the thin one, the one in the Tyrolean hat, the bald one and the woman who was with him; but his memory would not work and he could not put names to the faces. The bald hunter gestured dismissively, and the woman with him opened her mouth in a soundless laugh. Dix knew then that he was on location; a film was being shot, and as Observer he had no cause for alarm. He and the bear ambled on in the direction of the cabin. The hunters moved aside into the shadows, disappearing, talking among themselves. Their voices were familiar, and still he could not put names to them. He listened to their voices and soft laughter, the ambiance festive again. He wondered if they were having a party. Whatever they were doing, he was not invited to participate. When he opened his mouth to speak, he could not find his voice. The bear waddled off, the cabin vanished into the darkness. He whirled blindly, searching for the path to safety. But there was no path. What he heard was the sound of birds’ wings beating furiously.