The Good German (Bestselling Backlist)

by Joseph Kanon

  “No, I assumed Sikorsky drove—”

  “All the way to Zehlendorf? Well, maybe so. But I like to be neat. Cross the t’s.”

  “Okay. Later.”

  Gunther picked up the cup, half hiding his face. “Herr Geismar? Ask her something for me.” Jake waited. “Ask her how it felt.”

  At the detention center near the Alex he was shown into a small room as plain as the makeshift court—a single table, two chairs, a picture of Stalin. The escort, with elaborate courtesy, offered coffee and then left him alone to wait. Nothing to look at but the ceiling fixture, a frosted glass bowl that might once have been lighted with gas, a Wilhelmine leftover. Renate was led in through the opposite door by two guards, who left her at the table and positioned themselves against the wall, still as sconces.

  “Hello, Jake,” she said, her smile so tentative that her face seemed not to move at all. The same pale gray smock and roughly cut hair.

  “Renate.”

  “Give me a cigarette—they’ll think you have permission,” she said in English, sitting down.

  “You want to do this in English?”

  “Some, so they won’t suspect anything. One of them speaks German. Thank you,” she said, switching now to German as she took the light and inhaled. “My god, it’s better than food. You never lose your taste for it. I’m not allowed to smoke, back there. Where is your notebook?”

  “I don’t need one,” Jake said, confused. Suspect what?

  “No, please, I want you to write things down. You have it?”

  He pulled the pad out of his pocket, noticing for the first time that her hand was trembling, nervous under the sure voice. The cigarette shook a little as she lowered it to the ashtray.

  He busied himself with his pen, at a loss. Ask her how it felt, Gunther said, but what could she possibly say? A hundred nods, watching people being bundled into cars.

  “It’s so difficult to look at me?”

  Reluctantly he raised his head and met her eyes, still familiar under the jagged hair.

  “I don’t know how to talk to you,” he said simply.

  She nodded. “The worst person in the world. I know—that’s what you see. Worse than anybody.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you don’t look, either. Worse than anybody. How could she do those things? That’s the first question?”

  “If you like.”

  “Do you know the answer? She didn’t—somebody else did. In here.” She tapped her chest. “Two people. One is the monster. The other is the same person you used to know. The same. Look at that one. Can you do that? Just for now. They don’t even know she exists,” she said, tilting her head slightly toward the guards. “But you do.”

  Jake said nothing, waiting.

  “Write something, please. We don’t have much time.” Another jerky pull on the cigarette, anxious.

  “Why did you ask to see me?”

  “Because you know me. Not this other person. You remember those days?” She looked up from the ashtray. “You wanted to sleep with me once. Yes, don’t deny it. And you know, I would have said yes. In those days, the Americans, they were all glamorous to us. Like people in the films. Everyone wanted to go there. I would have said yes. Isn’t it funny, how things turn out.”

  Jake looked at her, appalled; her voice was wavering like her hand, edgy and intimate at the same time, the desperate energy of a crazy person.

  He glanced down at the notebook, anchoring himself. “Is that what you want? To talk about old times?”

  “Yes, a little,” she said in English. “Please. It’s important for them.” Her eyes moved to the guards again, then fixed back on him, steady, not crazy. A girl getting away with something. “So,” she said in her German voice, “what happened to everybody? Do you know?”

  When he didn’t answer, still disconcerted, she reached over to touch his hand.

  “Tell me.”

  “Hal went back to the States,” he began, confused, watching her. “At least, he was on his way the last time I saw him.” She nodded, encouraging him to go on. “Remember Hannelore? She’s here, in Berlin. I saw her. Thinner. She kept his flat.” The small talk of catching up. What did the guards make of it, standing under Stalin?

  Renate nodded, taking another cigarette. “They were lovers.”

  “So she said. I never knew.”

  “Well, I was a better reporter.”

  “The best,” he said, smiling a little, involuntarily drawn back with her. “Nothing escaped you.” He stopped, embarrassed, in the room again.

  “No. It’s a talent,” she said, looking away. “And you? What happened to you?”

  “I write for magazines.”

  “No more radio. And your voice was so good.”

  “Renate, we need to—”

  “And Lena?” she said, ignoring him. “She’s alive?”

  Jake nodded. “She’s here. With me.”

  Her face softened. “I’m happy for you. So many years. She left the husband?”

  “She will, when they find him. He’s missing.”

  “When who finds him?”

  “The Americans want him to work for them—a scientist. He’s a valuable piece of property.”

  “Is he?” she said to herself, intrigued by this. “And always so quiet. How things turn out.” She looked back at him. “So they’re all still alive.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard from Nanny Wendt.”

  “Nanny Wendt,” she said, her voice distant, in a kind of reverie. “I used to think about all of you. From that time. You know, I was happy. I loved the work. You did that for me. No German would do that, not then. Even off the books. I wondered, sometimes, why you did. Not even Jewish. You could have been arrested.”

  “Maybe I was too dumb to know any better.”

  “When I saw you in the court—” She lowered her head, her voice trailing off. “Now he knows too, I thought. Now he’ll only see her.” She tapped the right side of her chest. “The greifer.”

  “But you still asked to see me.”

  “There’s no one else. You helped me once. You remember who I was.”

  Jake shifted in his chair, awkward. “Renate, I can’t help you. I have nothing to do with the court.”

  “Oh that,” she said, waving her cigarette. “No, not that. They’ll hang me, I know it. I’m going to die,” she said easily.

  “They’re not going to hang you.”

  “It’s so different? They’ll send me east. No one comes back from the east. Always the east. First the Nazis, now them. No one comes back. I used to see them go. I know.”

  “You said you didn’t know.”

  “I knew,” she said, pointing again, then to the other side. “She didn’t. She didn’t want to know. How else to do it? Every week, more faces. How could you do it if you knew? After a while she could do anything. No tears. A job. It’s all true, what they said in there. The shoes, the Café Heil, all of it. And the work camps, she thought that. How else could she do it? That’s what happened to her.”

  Jake looked up, nodding to her real side. “And what happened to her?”

  “Yes,” she said wearily, “you came for that. Go ahead, write.” She sat up, darting her eyes sideways to the guards. “Where shall we start? After you left? The visa never came. Twenty-six marks. A birth certificate, four passport pictures, and twenty-six marks. That’s all. Except somebody had to take you, and there were too many Jews already. Even with my English. I can still speak it. You see?” she said, switching. “Not a bad accent. Speak for a while—they’ll think I’m showing off for you. So they’ll be used to it.”

  “The accent’s fine,” Jake said, still confused but meeting her gaze, “but I’m not sure I understand everything you’re saying.”

  “Any change of expression from them?” she said.

  “No.”

  “So I stayed in Berlin,” she said in German. “And of course things got worse. The stars. The special benches in th
e park. You know all that. Then the Jews had to work in factories. I was in Siemenstadt. My mother too, an old woman. She could barely stand at the end of the day. Still, we were alive. Then the roundups started. Our names were there. I knew what it would mean—how could she live? So we went underground.”

  “U-boats?”

  “Yes, that’s how I knew, you see. How it was, what they would do. All their tricks. The shoes—no one else thought of that. So clever, they told me. But I knew. I had the same problem, so I knew they would go there. And of course they did.”

  “But you didn’t stay underground.”

  “No, they caught me.”

  “How?”

  She smiled to herself, a grimace. “A greifer. A boy I used to know. He always liked me. I wouldn’t go with him—a Jew. I never thought of myself as Jewish, you see. I was—what? German. To think of that now. An idiot. But there he was, in the café, and I knew he must be underground, too, by that time. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. Do you know what that’s like, not to talk? You get hungry for it, like food. And I knew he liked me and I thought maybe he would help me. Anyone who could help—”

  “And did he?”

  She shrugged. “To the Gestapo car. They took me in and beat me. Not so bad, not like some of the others, but enough. So I knew I wasn’t German anymore. And the next time would be worse. They wanted to know where my mother was. I didn’t tell them, but I knew I would the next time. And then he did help. He had friends there—friends, the devils he worked for. He said he could make a bargain for me. I could work with him and they’d keep us off the list, my mother too. If I went with him. After this? I said. And you know what he said to me? ‘It’s never too late to make a bargain in this life. Only in the next.’” She paused. “So I went with him. That was the bargain. He got me and I kept my life. The first time I was sent out, we went together. His pupil. But I was the one who spotted the woman that day. I knew the look, you see. And after the first time—well, what does it matter how many, it’s just the first one, over and over.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was deported. When he was with me, it was all right for him. We were a team. But then they split us up, and on his own he was not so successful. I was the one, I had the eye. He had nothing to bargain anymore. So.” She squashed out the cigarette.

  “But you did,” Jake said, watching her.

  “Well, I was better at it. And Becker liked me. I kept my looks. You see here?” She pointed to her left cheek, folded up near the edge of her eye. “Only this. When they beat me, my face was swollen, but it went down. Only this. And Becker liked that. It reminded him, maybe. I don’t know of what.” She looked away, finally distressed. “Oh my god, how can we talk this way? How can I describe what it was like? What difference does it make? Write anything you want. It can’t be worse. You think I’m making excuses. It was David, it was Becker. Yes, and it was me. I thought I could do this, that we could talk, but when I talk about it—look at your face—you see her. The one who killed her own. That’s what they want for the magazines.”

  “I’m just trying to understand it.”

  “Understand it? You want to understand what happened in Germany? How can you understand a nightmare? How could I do it? How could they do it? You wake up, you still can’t explain it. You begin to think maybe it never happened at all. How could it? That’s why they have to get rid of me. No evidence, no greifer, it never happened.”

  She was shaking her head and looking away, her eyes beginning to fill.

  “Now look. I thought I was finished with that, no tears. Not like my mother. She cried enough for both. ‘How can you do this?’ Well, it was easy for her. I had to do the work, not her. Every time I looked at her, tears. You know when they stopped? When she got in the truck. Absolutely dry. I thought, she’s relieved not to have to live this way anymore. To see me.”

  Jake took a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her. “She didn’t think that.”

  Renate blew her nose, still shaking her head. “No, she did. But what could I do? Oh, stop,” she said to herself, wiping her face. “I didn’t want to do this, not in front of you. I wanted you to see the old Renate, so you would help.”

  Jake put down the pen. “Renate,” he said quietly, “you know it won’t make any difference what I write. It’s a Soviet court. It doesn’t matter to them.”

  “No, not that. I need your help. Please.” She reached for his hand again. “You’re the last chance. It’s finished for me. Then I saw you in the court and I thought, not yet, not yet, there’s one more chance. He’ll do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Oh, look at this,” she said, wiping her eyes again. “I knew if I started—” She turned to the guards, and for an instant it occurred to Jake that she was playing, the tears part of some larger performance.

  “Do what?” he said again.

  “Please,” she said to the guard, “would you bring me some water?”

  The guard on the right, the German speaker, nodded, said something in Russian to the other, and left the room.

  “Write this down,” she said to Jake in English, her voice low, as if it were coming from the back of a sob. “Wortherstrasse, in Prenzlauer, the third building down from the square. On the left, toward Schönhauserallee. An old Berliner building, the second courtyard. Frau Metzger.”

  “What is this, Renate?”

  “Write it, please. There’s not much time. You remember in court I told you I didn’t do it for myself?”

  “Yes, I know. Your mother.”

  “No.” She looked at him, her eyes sharp and dry. “I have a child.”

  Jake’s pen stopped. “A child?”

  “Write it. Metzger. She doesn’t know about me. She thinks I work in a factory. I pay her. But the money runs out this month. She won’t keep him now.”

  “Renate—”

  “Please. His name is Erich. A German name—he’s a German child, you understand? I never had it done. You know, down there.” She pointed to her groin, suddenly shy.

  “Circumcised.”

  “Yes. He’s a German child. No one knows. Only you. Not the magazines either, promise me? Only you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Take him. Prenzlauer’s in the east. She’ll give him up to the Russians. You must take him—there’s no one else. Jake, if you were ever fond of me at all—”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Yes, crazy. Do you think after everything else I’ve done, I couldn’t ask this? Do you have children?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know. You can do anything for a child. Even this,” she said, spreading her hand to the room, the greifer’s life. “Even this. Was I right to do it? Ask God, I don’t know. But he’s alive. I saved him, with their money. They gave me pocket money, you know, for the cafés, for—” She stopped. “Every pfennig was for him. I thought, you’re paying to keep a Jew alive. At least one of us is going to live. That’s why I had to stay alive, not for me. But now—”

  “Renate, I can’t take a child.”

  “Yes, please. Please. There’s no one else. You were decent, always. Do this for him, if not the mother, what you think of her. Everything I did—one more day, one more day alive. How can I give up now? If you take him to America, they can hang me, at least I’ll know I got him out. Safe. Out of this place.” She grabbed his hand again. “He’d never know what his mother did. To live with that. He’d never know.”

  “Renate, how could I take a child to America?”

  “The west, then, anywhere but here. You could find a place for him—I trust you, I know you’d make it all right, decent people. Not some Russian camp.”

  “What do I tell him?”

  “That his mother died in the war. He’s so young, he won’t remember. Just some woman who used to come sometimes. You can tell him you used to know her when she was a girl, but she died in the war. She did,” she said, looking down. “It
’s not a lie.”

  Jake looked at the blotchy face, the sharp eyes finally dulled by a sadness so oppressive that he felt his own shoulders sinking. Always something worse. He nodded his head toward the side she thought was real.

  “She didn’t,” he said.

  Her face was confused for a second, then cleared, almost in a smile. “That’s only for today. So I could ask you. After this, there’s only her,” she said, putting her finger on the other side. “It’s over.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. At least let me talk to the lawyers.”

  “Oh, Jake, to say what? You were there, you saw them. What would mercy be—a Russian prison? Who survives that?”

  “People do.”

  “To come back as what? An old woman, back to Germany? And meanwhile, what happens to Erich? No, it’s over. If you want to help me, save my child. Ah, the water,” she said, fluttering a little as the guard came through the door with a glass and handed it to her. “Thank you,” she said in German, “it’s very kind.” As she drank, the guard looked at the other guard with an “anything happen?” expression, answered by a shrug.

  “So you’ll help?” Renate said.

  “Renate, you can’t ask me to do this. I’m sorry, but I don’t—”

  “In English now,” she said, switching. “I’m not asking you, I’m begging you.”

  “What about his father?”

  “Dead. When we were underground. One night he didn’t come back, that’s all. So I knew. I had the baby myself.” She handed back the handkerchief. “You be the father.”

  “Stop. I can’t do that.”

  “He’ll die,” she said, her eyes fixed on his. “Now, when it’s over, after everything.”

  Jake turned his head, taking in the guards, Stalin’s flat iconic gaze. “Look,” he said finally, “I know a church. They work with children, orphans, try to place them. I can talk to the pastor, he’s a good man, maybe there’s something he—”

  “They find homes? In the west? With Christians?”

  “Well, yes, they would be. I’ll ask. Maybe he knows a Jewish family.”

  “No. A German boy. So he’ll be safe next time.”

  “You want him to be German?” Jake said, amazed. The endless, twisted cord.