St Kilda Blues

by Geoffrey McGeachin

  Back in their room after dinner Berlin carefully hung up his new overcoat in the wardrobe and sponged the spot of mustard off his scarf in the bathroom. He put on his pyjamas and cleaned his teeth while Rebecca sat on the bed, sorting through the rolls of film she had taken on her walk. He heard a noise from the bedroom when he turned off the tap and when he walked back into the room Rebecca looked up from the neat groupings of exposed and unexposed film cassettes.

  ‘Is something funny, Charlie? You’re smiling.’

  ‘You were humming.’

  She looked at him. ‘Was I?’

  In bed he held her close till she fell asleep. They were much gentler with each other now, he realised, more careful with words and touch. She was broken like he was and he understood how hard it must have been for her over the last twenty years, coping with his loss. This loss was different, of course; it was one they shared, and though they were both broken as individuals he understood clearly after her words on the hotel balcony in Israel that it would never break them as a couple.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Most of the tables and booths were already occupied in the hotel coffee shop when they came down for breakfast. There was an extensive hot buffet, mostly aimed at Americans, it seemed to Berlin, though there was also a range of cold meats and cheeses and different kinds of bread and rolls. Sarah would love this, he thought. Sarah was a real breakfast girl. On summer weekends he would cook up freshly picked tomatoes from the garden while she hovered at his elbow. When she was older he put her in charge of making toast, challenging her to have it hot and buttered at the exact moment the tomatoes were done.

  He had lost weight in Israel, according to Rebecca, and she suggested the cold weather was as good an excuse as any for a big breakfast. The coffee shop staff were friendly and helpful like the people he had encountered the night before and he found himself relaxing, even smiling. They helped him load his plate with eggs and sausages and bacon and sautéed mushrooms. He paused in front of a tray of rösti, golden brown cakes of fried shredded potato, and the flashback to starving men gnawing at raw potatoes was brief and then gone.

  Back at their table, Rebecca was talking to someone from reception. The conversation was in German and he heard the name Peter mentioned but Rebecca was smiling and nodding so he knew it wasn’t anything bad. The man from reception dropped his head in a quick bow before he turned and walked away. Berlin sat down at the table.

  ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Apart from the fact you appear to have decimated the breakfast buffet, everything is fine. Peter just called from Duntroon, but we must have been in the elevator on the way down so we missed him. He just wanted to make sure we were okay.’

  Berlin was still in wonder at the transformation of the boy, not just physically but also in maturity and in terms of the caring and compassion that had been such a part of his sister’s personality. They had persuaded him to take up the offered commission and he had gone from Melbourne to Canberra rather than straight back to South Vietnam and the jungle.

  ‘Do you want to call him back?’

  ‘He said he’d call us back in an hour. It’s just on midnight back home but apparently he’s staying up to study for a test tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s not the same kid who’d never do his homework no matter what I threatened him with, is it?’

  ‘He’s not a kid any more, Charlie, that’s for sure.’

  Berlin was about to remind Rebecca of what Lazlo had said about the boy being a man one day, but included in that was his comment about Sarah so he stopped himself. He glanced down at his watch but Rebecca had noticed.

  ‘Tell you what, Charlie, why don’t you finish your breakfast and then go and sort out this Scheiner business. You don’t need me for that and I’ll just wait here for the call. The sooner you find out what you need to know the sooner we can head home.’

  When he stepped out of the hotel and into the chill morning air twenty minutes later he was instantly conscious of the wind on his ears. He realised he had left his hat upstairs in their room but the Hilton’s brown-coated doorman had already waved a taxi forward and opened the back door. The doorman glanced at the address written on the card in Berlin’s gloved hand and spoke to the driver as Berlin climbed into the back seat.

  Eichborndamm was located in the French-controlled sector of the city. The taxi took them to a red-brick, two-storey building stretching down a long block on a wide, tree-lined street. The street must have looked great in summer but now the trees were bare, giving it a somewhat sombre look. Berlin decided the wintry look would always be appropriate given that number 179 was the location of the Wehrmacht Information Office for War Losses and Prisoners of War. A porter at the main gate spoke briefly to the taxi driver and then directed him to an entranceway, where he dropped Berlin off.

  There were a number of people already sitting in the reception area, mostly elderly women. Berlin waited his turn and his inquiry produced an English-speaking clerk who limped up to the counter and asked how he might be of assistance. Berlin unfolded a carbon copy of his original letter of inquiry.

  ‘I sent this from Australia in September last year. As I happened to be in Berlin I wondered if I might be able to see where you are with my request.’

  The clerk smoothed out the creases in the letter on the desktop before reading it. He nodded his head several times and ran his right index finger slowly under Berlin’s name and then Gerhardt Scheiner’s and pursed his lips. He looked up finally.

  ‘I can look into this as you wish Herr Berlin, but it may take time, I’m afraid. Can you perhaps come back later?’

  Berlin looked at his watch. ‘Later when? I’m afraid we have limited time in your city and it’s just one name.’

  ‘This I understand, of course. However, I must point out that we are here responsible for the records of over 18 million Germans who served in the war and we have many items for these soldiers, over 100 million. He looked over to the waiting area where the elderly women were seated and lowered his voice. ‘Every day you understand we have letters from wives and mothers and children asking if there is news of a loved one. On the Ostfront, the Eastern Front, the Red Army took over 700 000 prisoners after Stalingrad and many of these men are still today missing and the Soviets tell us nothing.’

  Berlin looked at the line of waiting women and turned back to the man behind the counter. ‘Please excuse my rudeness, I do apologise.’

  The clerk held up a hand and then pushed a notepad and ballpoint pen across the counter. ‘If you have a number where I might leave a message I shall see what can be achieved.’

  Berlin wrote down the telephone number of the Hilton and his name and room number and handed the pad and pen back.

  Outside on the street he realised he should have asked to use the phone to call Rebecca, but there was a phone box on the next street corner so he walked to it. His ears were stinging from the cold and he was starting to regret not going back for his hat before he left the hotel. A lady passing with a child in a stroller stopped and helped him to select the correct coins for a local call. The dial tone confused him for a moment but then he figured out what was what and the efficient receptionist at the Hilton put him through to their room.

  ‘Peter?’

  Berlin smiled at the sound of her voice. ‘It’s just me. I thought he would have called by now.’

  ‘He did but it was an awful line. He was going to try again, that’s why I thought it was him. You left your hat here by the way.’

  ‘My ears remind me every time I step outside. I’ll get off the phone in case Peter is trying to get through. These record people might take a while so I thought I’d go for a wander, unless you want me to come back.’

  ‘No, you go and have a look around and maybe call in later. If I don’t hear from you after I speak to Peter I might go and take some more shots of the city. That’s if the weather holds off. See if you can buy yourself an umbrella if it rains. And maybe a hat.’

  ‘O
kay. And when you talk to Peter, give him my . . .’ He was about to say ‘best’ but at the last minute changed his mind. ‘Give him my love. And I love you too.’ Charlie Berlin had decided when you loved someone you should say it out loud and as often as possible, before it was too late.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The taxi stopped at the end of a long street and the driver pointed down the road.

  ‘Friedrichstrasse, Checkpoint Charlie.’

  Berlin held out a handful of notes and the driver selected one and then, to Berlin’s surprise, tried to hand back several coins as change. The driver nodded as Berlin held up a hand to indicate it wasn’t necessary.

  He watched as his taxi drove away and then he walked with his head down and overcoat collar up towards Checkpoint Charlie. The Russians who had freed him from the camp in ’45 wore a fur-lined cap called an ushanka that folded down over the ears and neck, and right now he wouldn’t have minded one. At least the rain had stopped for the moment.

  There were taxis and some private cars about, and military and police vehicles, but not as many as he expected. As he approached the checkpoint the only vehicles in sight were US military jeeps and police cars. From a distance he could make out a signboard reading ‘Allied Checkpoint’ with British, French and American flags painted underneath it.

  The checkpoint was just a white-painted shed in the middle of the wide roadway, shielded at either end by a low wall of sandbags. The shed had several powerful spotlights mounted on the roof and the stars and stripes flying from a flagpole above it. Red and white–striped boom barriers just beyond it blocked the road, and further on there were more barriers across a wide open space before you came to the Russian sector. A jeep parked by the checkpoint had ‘Military Police’ painted under the windshield and the soldiers he could see inside the checkpoint building were wearing MP armbands.

  Past the checkpoint, men with rifles or submachine guns slung over their shoulders were stationed at intervals. Some were stamping their feet or clapping gloved hands together to stay warm. Closer to the Russian side the uniforms changed from a blue or grey colour to a dirty brown. Barbed wire was strung from Y-shaped metal supports above roughly built stone walls and there were long meandering lines of rusting Czech hedgehogs, tank traps made from sections of old steel railway line welded together.

  Beyond the wire and walls and tank traps he could see observation points and watchtowers, and when the sun briefly broke through the overcast sky, glints of light reflected off binoculars or weapons. There appeared to have been much less repair and reconstruction in the Russian sector, with huge empty spaces visible between buildings. Turning away from the checkpoint, he noticed he was being watched from a second-floor window of a building directly opposite him and suddenly he wanted very much to be somewhere else.

  He would walk as long as the rain held off, he decided, and then figure out what to do. He followed the line of the wall, walking in a westerly direction, and found himself in a run-down neighbourhood with very little pedestrian traffic. The signs of the final battle for Berlin that he had seen from the taxi on their ride in from the airport were much more visible to a man on foot; the chips and scars and gouges and craters made by the exchange of bullets and mortars and artillery shells as the two sides fought out the final bloody days of the war street by street and house by house.

  He kept the wall on his left, watching as it changed in height and construction. In some places it crossed empty lots to connect tall buildings with roughly bricked-in windows and doorways. There was always barbed wire and in some places the top of the wall sparkled from shards of broken glass set into a thick layer of concrete. Crossing a wide, empty street he walked over two double lines, steel tram tracks that stopped abruptly where the barrier wall sliced across the thoroughfare, cutting right over the top of them. The tracks were a reddish brown, rusty from disuse, weeds growing in the dirt caught in the gaps beside them.

  At intervals there were wooden observation platforms where people could look over the wall into the Russian zone. He climbed up on one and it was like looking into his POW camp from the outside. Between the wall and the rows of hedgehog tank traps was a smooth, open area, which he guessed was under observation from the guard towers day and night and most probably sown with mines. It was an odd feeling to be here, with his former rescuers now his captors in one sense. He was both a free man and a prisoner at the same time. He was glad when it began to rain so that he had an excuse to find shelter.

  In the fading grey afternoon light the warm yellow glow from the low-wattage bulbs in the cafe was a welcoming sight. He shook the water out of his hair as he entered. The place was empty apart from a man behind the bar and a table of four at the rear who glanced briefly in his direction. Two of the four were black men in civilian clothes, obviously off-duty US soldiers, and the others were a couple of local hippies, a boy and girl in their late teens, both with long hair. There was a loud, sustained metallic guitar sound from the jukebox and Berlin heard the words, ‘Light my fire’. Besides cooking fat he could also smell marijuana.

  The place was as run-down as the neighbourhood it serviced, with dirty curtains in the window and tables and chairs that had seen better days. He chose a table away from the group, but this put him close to the jukebox. There were hooks on the wall behind the table and he hung up his coat and scarf with his gloves in the pocket. The man behind the bar brought him a menu and Berlin ordered coffee, shaking his head at the offer of schnapps. Even though he was getting hungry he glanced at the menu and decided not to eat. He could guess what Koteletts were and figured that Wildschweinbratten might be pork of some kind, but the creased, grease-stained menu didn’t inspire confidence. The coffee when it came was good though, and he ordered a second cup.

  The song on the jukebox ended and he could hear a radio playing from somewhere behind a dirty curtain that may have led to the kitchen. The girl at the table of four called out something to him in German and he shook his head. She giggled and almost fell off her chair.

  ‘If you speak English, my little Fraulein Helga here said there’s coins on the jukebox and you should pick us a song. We are all a little too stoned to be making any kind of decisions right now, especially musical.’

  It was the larger of the two black soldiers speaking and his voice, though deep, had a sort of sleepy, warm rhythm and cadence to it. He was a pretty sharp dresser, Berlin noted, and his dark hair was long for a soldier but cut in a neat sort of helmet shape around his head.

  Berlin walked over to the jukebox and studied the list of titles. Most were in German so he picked one that he could read. One of the coins from a small pile went into the slot and he pressed the number and was back in his seat when the music started. He’d picked out ‘Hey Joe’ because it sounded inoffensive but it appeared to be a popular choice. The black man smiled at him and nodded.

  ‘Jimmy, my man. Right on, brother.’

  Berlin’s second cup was half done when car headlights flashed across the front windows. The laughing at the table of four stopped when the two men entered the cafe. They were wearing the kind of shoes and overcoats that just couldn’t help saying plain-clothes police. One of them crossed over to the jukebox and pulled the plug from the wall. He walked over to the group at the back table and Berlin heard the word Raus. He suddenly shivered as he remembered the camp guards shouting the word when they ordered the POWs outside for an assembly or a headcount in the freezing cold.

  The four people at the other table stood up and took their coats from the hooks on the wall. The two soldiers pulled green military hooded winter parkas on over their civilian clothes. The hippie couple wore black-dyed surplus parkas crudely painted with ‘Ban The Bomb’ symbols and slogans in white. It took the stoned girl a bit of effort to get into hers. As they passed the men at the door the black soldier who had spoken to Berlin raised his clenched right fist to shoulder height.

  One of the men followed the group outside. After looking around the now empty cafe the sec
ond man walked across to Berlin’s table. He took off his overcoat and a knitted khaki watch cap. Under the cap his hair was cut short, which confirmed police or military. He was wearing a suit and tie and had the build of a boxer. He sat down opposite Berlin and took a packet of Camel cigarettes from his jacket pocket.

  ‘Smoke?’

  Berlin was about to refuse but changed his mind and took the offered cigarette. He leaned across the table to have it lit. The Zippo lighter had a military crest engraved on it. The man lit his own cigarette and looked across the cafe at the barman and said, ‘Bier.’ He put the lighter on the table next to his cigarettes.

  ‘Speak English?’ The accent was American, the tone slightly menacing.

  Berlin nodded.

  The barman put a tall beer glass on the table but the man ignored him. He took a sip of his beer before he spoke again.

  ‘Tourist? You have papers? You don’t look like you come from around here.’ The tone was more menacing now.

  ‘I don’t. I’m just here on a short holiday. I’m afraid I left my passport at the hotel. I’m from Australia, actually.’

  ‘Austria? You sound like a goddamn Limey, actually.’

  ‘Not Austria, Australia. You know, kangaroos.’ Berlin realised he had very few other ways of describing where he came from. ‘What about you, where’s home?’

  The man seemed to be surprised at having been asked the question. He sipped his beer. ‘I’m from Michigan, the Upper Peninsula if you know where that is.’

  ‘Sorry, never heard of it. But I’m guessing there aren’t too many kangaroos. You in the US army? Military police?’

  The other man studied Berlin’s face carefully. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I dunno, your khaki watch cap, the Zippo and the PX cigarettes. And the way your mate ordered those soldiers out of here. I’m a copper back home, a detective inspector. The name is Charlie.’