by Pierre Frei
'I once had an excellent zander here. The Mosel was just as good, and the company was entrancing.' Rainer Jordan looked at Jutta with a tiny smile that escaped the others. 'But sad to say, nothing came of coffee afterwards.' She was surprised to feel herself going moist. She pressed her thighs together, which intensified the sensation and was not at all unpleasant.
Zander wasn't in season at this time of year, and no one would have wanted it. Instead they ate an excellent Viennese goulash with dumplings, and drank Franconian wine. 'How's Armin Drechsel doing?' Isabel asked. She gave Jutta a meaningful glance.
'His pupils shine in their maths exams,' Jochen said enthusiastically. 'They say he'll get early promotion to senior status. He's a very gifted teacher.'
And a very gifted Hitler Youth leader,' said Jutta dryly. 'Does he teach the boys' lessons in shorts too?'
Armin takes his responsibilities in the Hitler Youth very seriously,' her husband told her. Isabel pouted, and gave a scornful snort.
'I'm going for a spin in the car with Jochen,' said her husband. 'Order coffee for us, will you?'
'To get back to the subject of Drechsel .'said Jutta impatiently, as soon as she and Isabel were alone.
'I was going to do just that, so listen. No, it's not the cane. Armin doesn't beat little boys. Armin abuses them.'
'What do you mean?'
'I found out by chance at the uni. I hadn't seen the 'Out of Order' notice on the door of the Ladies' room. Armin was in there with his trousers down and the caretaker's twelve-year-old son in front of him. I never told anyone. You don't like to get a fellow-student into trouble. But I realize now that it wasn't just a one-off'
'He indecently assaults children?' Jutta was horrified.
'Boys. He has plenty of opportunity. First it was the Wandervogel hikers, then the Pathfinders. Later he attached himself to the Hitler Youth. His position as teacher in a boys' school fits the picture too. He's always around places where boys gather together. On a long-distance hike, camping out in tents, in your school. You can guess where the blood on little Didi's trousers came from.'
They were interrupted by the return of the men. Jochen was in transports of delight. 'Rainer let me take the wheel. That engine - such sweet music! And the acceleration ...'
'It has four wheels, like any other car,' said Isabel, puring cold water on his enthusiasm. 'Darling, we must go home and change. We're expected at the Trencks' for cocktails at six.'
That evening Jutta smoked another of her rare Junos on the balcony. Jochen watched its smoke mingle with the yellow light of the street lamps. It was warm, peaceful late-summer weather, although dark events cast their shadows before them. The newspapers and radio had been full of bad news for days.
'Will they call you up if there's a war?'
'Teachers will be what they call a reserved occupation. I know that from Armin Drechsel. He has good connections with the authorities.'
I suppose that's why no one puts a stop to his activities.'
'Still not satisfied?' he snapped.
Jutta was not giving in. 'He was involved with the Wandervogel and the Pathfinders, then he went on to the Hitler Youth. Drechsel's been around wherever he can find a lot of boys gathered together. Including your school.'
'Look, I did what you wanted and spoke to him, and he had a perfectly satisfactory explanation.'
'Try asking him about the university caretaker's son. Isabel says she caught Drechsel at it with the boy in the toilets.'
'He'll deny such a slander and hit back, and then it'll be us in trouble. Drechsel has a long arm. I can already see myself stagnating in the provinces. And you with me.'
'You're a coward.'
'There's no proof.'
'What about little Didi? You talked to the abuser, so now why not talk to his victim?'
'Very well, I'm taking the class for our annual outing on Tuesday. We're going to the Kaiser Wilhelm Tower in the Grunewald. We'll have a picnic and play some fun games. The boys are looking forward to it. I'll have a word with Didi then, just to set your mind at rest once and for all.'
And if you do find out that something happened - will you cover up for Drechsel?'
'Do you really think I'd do a thing like that?'
'I don't know.' And she genuinely didn't. He often seemed so strange to her these days.
Jochen was already home when Jutta came back from work that Tuesday evening. He was sitting at the table, exhausted, staring into space. His voice was barely audible. 'You were right. I'm a coward, I've been a coward far too long.'
'Did you get any information out of Didi?'
'Drechsel has been abusing him and other boys for years.' Jochen looked up. He had tears in his eyes. 'Do you know what the boy said to me? "It doesn't hurt so much now when Herr Drechsel does it to me".'
Shattered, Jutta did not reply. At last she pulled herself together. 'You must report him. Didi will have to give evidence, no matter how unpleasant it is for him.'
Jochen closed his eyes. 'I took the class up the Kaiser Wilhelm Tower. There's a wonderful view from up there. And when we got to the top of the tower Didi jumped off. He died instantly.'
When Jutta thought about it afterwards, she was painfully aware that this was the moment she lost her innocence. It was replaced by a sense of helplessness. She was helpless as she stood by the open grave, listening to the priest who spoke, without knowing the truth, about the confusion of adoles cence. She was helpless as she noted that Drechsel had been promoted and moved to Schwerin and the National Political Education Institute, with a personal commendation from the Gauleiter. She watched, helpless, as a war that she did not want began. Helpless, she learned a few days after the outbreak of war that Jochen was being called up, although teachers were supposed to be a reserved profession. He had tried to get other boys in the class to talk. Forty-eight hours later he was at the Front, with practically no military training.
"'It's against all usual practice. Someone must have pulled a hell of a lot of strings to get rid of you, my dear fellow," said my battalion commander, looking at me as if I were some exotic animal,' Jochen wrote. It was his first letter home, and his last. A Polish sniper caught him on the latrine. No one had told him it was advisable to keep your head down when you answered the call of nature. Jutta received a handwritten letter:
Your husband Private Joachim Weber fell at the battle of Rydcz on 6 December 1939 doing his military duty, true to his oath of allegiance to the Fatherland. May the knowledge that your husband gave his life for the nation, the Fuhrer and the Reich be a comfort to you in your great grief. With regards and sincere condolences,
Kuntze, Captain and Company Commander.
She sent the news on by way of the Red Cross to Herr and Frau Carl Weber, Boescamp Farm, Windhoek, South West Africa. Drechsel killed Jochen and Didi and I shall kill him in return, she swore to herself.
She put Jochen's things away and remembered. It was her way of mourning. She couldn't help laughing when she came upon the photograph of herself leaning out of the window of the railway car, looking flushed, with Jochen's intent face behind her. Isabel had taken it with her little Kodak, in perfect innocence, or so she'd made out. Shaking her head, she put away the savings book for the car, where there were only three tokens missing.
They were to have taken delivery of their brand-new VW in October. It was now probably driving around on war business somewhere. The Waterman was full of blue ink. Jochen had left it behind in the desk. Lost in thought, Jutta drew a couple of hearts on the blotting paper.
Gradually, everyday life began again. The world of Onkel Toms Hiitte, still intact, won the upper hand. Jutta seldom left it. Her days flowed calmly on, divided between Frau Gerold's bookshop and the little Wilskistrasse apartment. The war was going on its victorious way, fortunately far from the Fatherland itself. Even the blaring fanfares of the Reich Radio brought it no closer. What did were hitherto unknown delicacies from allied or conquered countries. Frowein's fruit and vegetable
shop was suddenly selling persimmons: no one knew how to eat them. And they had artichokes on sale, and fresh figs. Familiar foodstuffs were available in abundance: only tea and coffee were in short supply. Diana Gerold got both from a woman she knew at the Swiss Embassy.
They closed the shop at one on a Saturday. Then Anja Schmitt came to fetch Diana to play tennis. And we're going to the pictures afterwards. The Zeli is showing a new movie with Zarah Leander. Want to come with us?' But Jutta was going into the city centre. Isabel had promised to bring her back a pair of shoes from Rome.
The Jordans were living on the Kurfiirstendamm, just as Rainer had predicted. He opened the door himself. 'Jutta, you've come at just the right moment. I'm cooking an early supper. I brought spaghetti back from Italy, parmesan too, and we'll have genuine Chianti with it.' The UfA studios had sent him to Cinecitta for negotiations over some films. 'Isabel is staying on in Rome for a couple of days.'
She knew the apartment from earlier visits with Jochen. The big drawing room had modern furniture: pale calfskin leather, white oak, Plexiglas, a few antiques, and as the crowning touch a television set. It looked like a radio with a kind of opaque-glass pane beside the loudspeaker. 'One of the few in private ownership.' said Rainer proudly. 'It cost me six hundred and fifty Reichsmarks. The other forty are in the Berlin field hospitals. They don't show much except for army reports and a Sunday programme with the pretty title 'Transmitting merriment, bringing joy'. Seems they're going to expand programming after the war - they'll even show feature films.'
He put a few drops of olive oil in boiling water and fed the hard spaghetti in until it softened and folded under the water. Tomatoes, garlic and tarragon were simmering in a saucepan.
As antipasto, they each had a can of tuna, calamari and olives in a piquant sauce. 'It's the most delicious thing I ever ate,' Jutta told him enthusiastically.
They have all these things fresh in the Cinecitta canteen.' He poured Chianti. 'They're filming very interesting things there. Some of it's trash, of course. The latest sentimental piece has Beniamino Gigli singing and languishing as a Roman taxi driver. It's sure to be a hit here too. I was supposed to be negotiating a co-production. Hans Albers and Alida Valli as a German-Italian couple. With a dear little Japanese girl as their adopted daughter. The Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis bears some strange fruits.'
And the Italians go along with this tosh?'
'They politely suggested I might approach the Spaniards. They'd rather work with the French. Conrad Jung is not best pleased. He was to direct, although he doesn't speak a word of Italian.' Rainer grated parmesan over the spaghetti, frowning over the task and looking delightful, as usual. And there was that tingling again.
He had brought back an espresso machine that you had to turn upside down as soon as the water rose in it. The brew was pitch black and very hot. Jutta drank it, sipping carefully. She put her cup down. 'We never got as far as coffee that time, did we?'
He knew what she meant. 'We never got as far as anything that time.'
'Let's make up for it.' She began to undress.
'Don't forget I'm an elderly gent in my mid-thirties.' He unbuttoned his trousers.
'I'm twenty-five and I want you.'
She draped her legs to left and right, over the arms of the chair. He knelt between her thighs. His erect penis turned slightly upwards; he guided it with one hand, rubbing the glans against her clitoris with circling movements. She relished the sensation that promised fulfilment as it grew stronger, but went on and on. The glans moved further and lingered between her lips. He did not move, and by that very fact brought her to the verge of a pulsating orgasm that she didn't want just yet, much as she was responding to him. He withdrew, and then thrust right into her. His staccato movements shook both her body and the chair, making its springs squeak. She looked down at herself, saw his hard prick parting her blonde pubic hair again and again as it thrust in, heightening her desire until it was intolerable and release came -- but there was more to come.
When she came out of the bathroom, fully dressed, he was standing by the window in his dressing gown. 'Unfinished business - we had to deal with it sometime,' he said, without turning round.
'Once and for all,' she agreed.
'No repeat performances.'
'Of course not.'
The glass of the shop window was miraculously intact. Jutta stood among the books in her stockinged feet. She opened the third little window of the Advent calendar. Outside, two small girls were pressing their noses flat against the pane, counting the days till Christmas. Only the children could still look forward to it. Adults were in a state of anxiety, somewhere between dwindling hope and growing fear. The incessant Allied air raids made Berlin purgatory in the days leading up to the Christmas of 1944. Hell itself still waited in the wings.
She put the calendar back between Rudolf Binding's On Riding: For a Lover and Goethe's Elective Affinities, books which she had decorated with a few sprigs of fir and some tinsel. Yawning, she climbed out of the window. A British air raid had kept her in the cellar all night, and she hadn't had a wink of sleep. She was also tormented by toothache. A filling had fallen out, and there were no dentists left in Onkel Toms Hutte. The younger ones were with the forces, and the one old dentist who had come out of retirement fled to his sister in the country soon after re-opening his practice.
'Perhaps they'll have some aspirin in the pharmacy.'
'Take a Eumed, Jutta, that'll help just as well.' Diana Gerold offered her the tin tube of tablets. And do go and see my dentist.'
Diana had been urging her to go for days. Jutta kept putting it off. Dr Brauer's practice was in the city, which meant three-quarters of an hour by U-Bahn. No one liked to leave the deceptive security of their immediate surroundings. including the generally inadequate air-raid shelters.
'Well, if you really insist.' She wound her silk scarf round her neck and put on the fox fur. The lined ankle-boots had been donated from Frau Gerold's wardrobe. She went up the slight rise of the shopping street to where the ground ran level, bought a return ticket and climbed down the wide flight of steps to the platform. The train came in. She got into one of the yellow no-smoking carriages. The smoking carriages were red. Four small children were chasing noisily around a man home on leave. He looked well-fed and content. He was stationed in Norway. His wife looked anxious and worn out. She was wearing a brightly embroidered, sheepskin coat that looked as if it didn't belong to her: it was obviously a present her husband had brought home.
Fresh snow had fallen overnight, turning the suburbs into a landscape dusted with icing sugar. In the city, it had already turned to a dirty-yellow slush that was being cleared away by horse-drawn snow ploughs.
Dr Brauer had his practice on the second floor of an apartment building in Budapester Strasse. The secretary at reception was expecting Jutta. 'Frau Gerold rang to say you were coming. There's another patient still to see the dentist before you. Please would you wait in the next room.'
The other patient turned out to be Armin Drechsel. He had grown fat. His brown Party uniform was stretched over a paunch. His sandy hair was sparser than five years earlier, and his pale, infantile face fuller, but as expressionless as ever. 'Heil Hitler, Frau Weber,' he greeted her without showing any surprise.
Her stomach cramped. She could have thrown up there and then, but she controlled herself. 'Good day, Herr Drechsel, what a coincidence.'
A wisdom tooth. What about you?'
'I'm having a filling replaced.'
'It's a long time since we last met. I'm head of the Political Education Institute in Schwerin now. How are you doing?'
Dr Brauer appeared, a kindly, white-haired gentleman with gold-rimmed glasses. 'Herr Drechsel, please.' She was glad when the door closed. A dull physical pain filled her, slowly giving way to icy rage.
Dr Brauer brought the patient back into the waiting room shortly afterwards. A few minutes, please, until the injection takes effect. Would you come in now, Frau Weber?'
She had to pass very close to Drechsel. If I had a weapon now, she suddenly thought, and there was no melodrama in her mind, only deadly determination.
'Please rinse,' the dentist told her when he had replaced the filling. At that very moment the sirens howled. The first bombs dropped very close. 'They don't warn you in good time any more,' said Brauer crossly. 'Come on, down the back stairs is quickest.' He hurried ahead, white coat flying.
Down below, candles cast a little light in the cellar. More and more of the tenants of the building arrived and sat down on the rough-hewn benches. Dr Brauer's receptionist took knitting out of her big bag. Drechsel was nowhere to be seen.
The anti-aircraft shells sounded like the kind of theatrical thunder you make with sheets of metal. The flying fortresses of the US Air Force droned ten thousand metres above the city. The blast from the bombs shook their targets even before they made impact. So far the bombers had spared the west of the city: their targets were the workers' quarters. The plan was to make the working classes rebel against the Nazi regime, although the Allies had miscalculated. The woman next to Jutta put what they were all fearing into words: 'It's our turn today.'
Confirmation followed within seconds. The roar of five hundred kilos of exploding Amtex 9 paralysed them all. A bomb had hit the roof and detonated before it could pass through the floors below. Part of its force was muted.
Hits close by shook the foundations of the building. The cellar was full of people, screaming, coughing and whimpering. The beam of a torch lit up the dust like car headlights penetrating fog. The receptionist sat like a white marble statue, still knitting.
An acrid smell of phosphorus grew stronger. 'They're carpet bombing us, and we're right in the line of fire!' someone shouted. 'We must get out of here!'