Then We Take Berlin

by Lawton, John

  “I will not leave you. I will not see you go hungry. I will not leave you. I will bring you pajoks.”

  It was more than a statement—it was his manifesto. The terms of the relationship.

  “You are kind, Yuri. But I am not my mother. I will not sleep with you for this.”

  “And I will not ask you to.”

  §95

  Berlin: 1947

  It was love at first sight. He and Berlin were made for each other. He took to it like a rat to a sewer.

  In the new year of 1947 Burne-Jones met him for breakfast in the Atlantic. Between the crisp bacon and the reconstituted scrambled egg Burne-Jones slid a military buff envelope and another strip of wool across the table to him—corporal’s stripes—the mark of Beelzebub.

  “You’ve earned them.”

  Wilderness thought he’d earned a damn sight more than that.

  He tore open the envelope. A travel warrant to Berlin. The Silk Stocking Express.

  “What’s the job?”

  “Well . . .”

  “More fuckin’ fragebogeys?”

  “Inevitably so, but nothing like the pile you’ve just gone through. And this time you’ll be number one. But you’ll be doing a lot more interpreting . . . and some driving.”

  “I still haven’t passed a test.”

  “Well . . . you managed not to prang my MG in Cambridge, didn’t you? Mind you, a lot more gears on a Land Rover.”

  This was goading. They hadn’t mentioned the MG in ages.

  Wilderness decided not to take the bait and said simply, “But that’s not all.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ll be requiring your special talents from time to time. Not that you can or should regard everything else as a cover . . .”

  “’S’OK. I get the picture.”

  §96

  The Silk Stocking Express was crowded that Saturday afternoon. He almost wished he’d put on his Welsh Guards outfit and been able to demand a seat, but it was too precious, too useful to risk getting busted over a railway journey and a warrant and a uniform that did not match, so he sat on his kit bag in the corridor with a thousand other erks. If the train was heated he couldn’t tell. He’d hung on to the flying jacket Johnnie Blackwall had given him on the flight out to Hamburg, slipped his arms inside it and shoved his hands into his armpits. With depressing regularity someone would fart or belch, the corridor would stink, and Wilderness began to wonder if he was the only person whose guts were in tune—but then, lavatories being frozen as well as everything else, once in a while a window would go down, the cold, clean air would knife in and a bag of shit got thrown out, proving that he wasn’t. “First we bomb your cities flat, then we shower you in shit.”

  A stout, misleadingly miserable-looking lance bombardier of the Royal Artillery met him at the Charlottenburg station.

  “Welcome to Bizonia,” said Eddie.

  “Marx Brothers, right? Groucho singing ‘Hail Bizonia.’”

  “That was Freedonia, Joe. This is Bizonia, as of last week. A fairy-tale kingdom. Look out for dwarves, unicorns, and a thousand tons of ’ooky fags. I’m your driver. Been sent to take you wherever you want to go, seeing as you are now a high and mighty corporal.”

  “What a turn up for the book. How long have you been in Berlin?”

  “Since last August.”

  That was galling. Wilderness knew he’d drawn the short straw with Hamburg—but somehow Eddie got posted to Berlin. A city where you could smell money on the breeze.

  This was not a breeze. This was a wind that cut to the bone. Suddenly the train seemed like warmth. It was far below freezing, all extremities tingled with cold and his breath hung in the air in billowing nimbus clouds.

  “I got the canvas up, but the car’s still like an iceberg on wheels. The sooner we get to our digs the better.”

  “Our digs?”

  “Yeah, we’re sharing till the next lucky sod gets posted home. We could walk from here, it’s that close, but we’d be like abominable wotsits by the time we got there.”

  Eddie drove them along Kantstraße and into Fasanenstraße at the north end, under the railway bridge to a battered five-storey apartment block.

  Wilderness had no reaction to the state of the city, except “you’ve seen one ruin, you’ve seen ’em all.”

  As they passed another gang of Trümmerfrauen Wilderness said, “‘If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose,’ the Walrus said, ‘that they could get it clear?’”

  Eddie said, “My old dad used to read that to me at bedtime. And I think the answer’s no. Come back in ten or twenty years’ time, there’ll still be gangs of women sweeping away bits of Berlin. I don’t think there’s a hole big enough to tip it all into. There are three words that sum up life in Berlin, and for all I know in the whole of soddin’ Germany—Trümmer, kaputt, and Ersatz. Everything is either rubbish, broken, or fake.”

  The room they shared was on the top floor. As Wilderness gazed around, Eddie went on, “D’you know, they drink tea made from apple peel and coffee made from acorns. They call the coffee Muckefuck. It’s the only German word I know of that needs no translation.”

  “Muckefuck?”

  “And that also describes the taste pretty well. Fortunately . . .” Eddie picked a plain brown paper packet off the dresser. “Fortunately we have . . . best NAAFI dark roast, none of your instant and none of your acorns. I’ll put the kettle on.”

  He disappeared behind the wooden partition that separated the two beds. Wilderness looked at the room. It was a jolt down from the Atlantic Hotel, but it was warm—a sputtering gas fire set into the chimney breast—and clean—anywhere Eddie lived would be, he lived by order, everything in its place—and light—tall, slender windows that stretched almost floor to ceiling.

  Wilderness dropped his kit bag on the bed, sloughed off the sheepskin and his blouse.

  Eddie was staring at the shoulder holster.

  “Wossup?”

  “Never seen one before. Standard issue, is it?”

  “I got it from the armourer, so I suppose so. In Hamburg everyone carried a gun outside the base.”

  “Not here they don’t. It’s compulsory in theory, but the MPs don’t give a toss about interpreters and medics. Just the combat blokes. I haven’t carried a gun since November. Just as well. Too many opportunities to start World War Three.”

  “Good. I was never crazy about having it.”

  He pulled at the top drawer in the tallboy. It was empty.

  “This one mine?”

  “Yep.”

  He wrapped the straps around the holster and dumped the gun in the drawer.

  Eddie said, “Makes you wonder what Burne-Jones has in mind for you doesn’t it?”

  It had and it did, but Wilderness was never going to say that.

  “I suppose you’re hungry?”

  “Yeah. There was nothing on the train, and if there had been—no way of getting to it short of throwing blokes off the train.”

  “Pilchards on toast?”

  “I don’t want to pinch your ration, Ed.”

  “Ration. Bollocks. I don’t do rationing.”

  He disappeared behind the partition once more and returned with a pot of aromatic black coffee and a sixteen ounce can of pilchards.

  “Toast is doing. Won’t be a mo’.”

  As Eddie sliced the lid off the pilchards, Wilderness said, “You got a source then?”

  “Have I got a source?”

  Then he let the short sentence rest as an enigma. Loaded pilchards onto toast, swilled coffee and looked like what he was inside—happy. The miserable exterior, Wilderness had long since concluded, was simply a way of repelling boarders.

  Food was good, but Wilderness would never be able to find in it the consummate pleasure that Eddie did. He ate quickly, Eddie savoured.

  “Coffee’s good,” he said, hoping to break Eddie’s mealtime self-absorption.

  “Yep.”

  “
Used to sell for a bob or two back in Hamburg.”

  “Does here too. Get your hands on a few packets and you’ll make . . . a packet.”

  “So, there’s fiddles, then?”

  “O’course. Didn’t you have fiddles in Hamburg?”

  “Nothing I could get at. All based out at the airfield, and I was in the city. Just like I am now.”

  Eddie was shaking his head. Wilderness could almost swear he was grinning.

  “No, no, noooo. Sources? Do I have sources? Fiddles? Do I have fiddles. Just sit tight for a minute.”

  Again he ducked behind the partition, only to reappear wearing his army greatcoat and humming a daft tune.

  “Da da daaa dah. Da da daaa dah.”

  And as much as a little fat bloke could this little fat bloke was dancing.

  The greatcoat opened and closed on the beat, and Wilderness realised he was doing the Royal Artillery’s version of a fan dance—Eddie’s own Folies Bergère.

  On the inside of his coat, from buttons to armpit, was a network of string and safety pins from which hung all manner of goodies.

  Eddie pulled off a pair of frilly knickers, tossed them over Wilderness’s head and onto the bed.

  “Da da daaa dah.”

  A matching bra.

  “Da da daaa dah.”

  A small bottle of Chanel perfume.

  “Da da daaa dah.”

  A bar of pink Cadum soap.

  “Bump, da bump, da bump”—as he turned, stuck his arse out and lobbed half a pound of coffee beans onto the bed without even looking at his aim.

  The music stopped, the grin was teetering on girlish giggles.

  “Do I have fiddles? Do I have fiddles? My greatcoat is a box of earthly delights, Berlin is our paradise regained, the NAAFI our cornucopia. Joe, we’re going to make a bob or two together.”

  Joe grinned back at him, and did not say what he was thinking.

  A bob or two might be only the beginning. He and Berlin were made for each other.

  §97

  Eddie took him to the Marrokkaner Club—a tiny entrance in a side-street cut between Savignyplatz and Uhlandstraße, that opened up into a vast, low-ceilinged cellar, too low ever to disperse the fug of tobacco and the lager-miasma that hung suspended above the tables.

  “Tomorrow we’ll go down the Tiergarten. The Schwarzmarkt, they call it now. Even the tram conductors call it that. They just yell ‘Schwarzmarkt.’”

  “An open secret?”

  “It’s like Berlin, a secret without a roof and mostly without walls. All out in the open. In all weathers. You could sell gumboots in June, deckchairs in December if someone else thought they could sell ’em on at a profit.”

  But tonight, Eddie introduced him to his “partners.”

  Pie Face—so called because he had a big round moonface and a flat nose, as though he’d gone a few rounds with Freddie Mills. Pie Face was from southwest Essex, Hornchurch. Once Wilderness had ridden to Hornchurch, at the furthest reach of the District Line on London’s Underground and thought it the edge of the world. It was a county corner that was all but indistinguishable from urban East London, and Pie Face had much the same accent as Wilderness. A corporal, and Royal Army Service Corps clerk, he was attached to the NAAFI/EFI stores on Adolf-Hitler-Platz.

  Spud—so called because he looked like a King Edward, his face pock-marked with “eyes”—was from the top end of Essex, a farm boy from the Stour Valley, with a lyrical East Anglian accent—a lance corporal, with the 62nd Transport and Movement Squadron, he worked in the Army’s “garage” and kept countless jeeps running.

  Eddie did not need to explain, but did. They were the perfect partners. Pie Face had access to all the stuff in the NAAFI—every fiddle and theft began with him, and Spud had the means to get them around Berlin.

  Wilderness was wondering what Eddie’s role might be in this wide-boys’ fraternity, and as if mind-reading Eddie said, “And I’m the brains of the outfit.”

  Wilderness smiled even as his heart sank. He liked Eddie, and it was no exaggeration to say that he was probably the best friend he’d ever had. He was a gentle man, bright as a button . . . but a criminal mastermind he wasn’t.

  “I do a lot of driving,” Eddie said, with a fingertip tap to the side of his nose.

  “I thought you were on Fragebogeys like me?”

  “Burne-Jones said I was crap at it. Took me off it. So I drive brass around in me jeep, translate for them and report back to him.”

  “You mean you’re a spy?”

  Eddie began to grin, the grin became a giggle.

  “It’s all bollocks isn’t it? I never hear a damn thing worth remembering let alone reporting. I drop posh blokes off at meetings, pick ’em up again an hour two later, and in the meantime . . .”

  “You do yer fan dance.”

  “Absolutely. Go out with a full greatcoat, come back with an empty one and pocket full of kraut money.”

  “We all do,” Spud chipped in.

  “Always room for one more,” said Pie Face.

  And Eddie was smiling. And Wilderness realised he had just joined a club he hadn’t even applied to.

  §98

  Sunday morning in the Tiergarten rewrote Wilderness’s idea of Germany. The Tiergarten in winter was bleak. On a day when an English family would be at home listening to a variety show on the radio or sleeping off Sunday lunch, Berliners were out en masse. It was insect-like, a swarm from the hive. The sky was grey, the buildings were grey, the world was grey. The people were . . . yellow . . . a poxy, wasted, vitamin-deficient yellow.

  He and Eddie stood not fifty yards from the hollow shell of the Reichstag—in a sense they were at the heart of Germany, at the urban pulse of Berlin, stamping their feet against the cold where a million jackboots had goose-stepped . . . a patch of bare frozen ground that Berliners had now turned into an allotment to raise vegetables. Someone had planted gooseberry bushes. Goosestep to gooseberry in only twelve years. An imperial city to . . . a madman’s folly. Wilderness wondered if Berlin would leave the Reichstag as it was—a permanent memorial to that folly.

  The scale of the Schwarzmarkt was almost unbelievable, the number of Schiebers uncountable. Everyone sold, everyone bought or bartered, hence everyone was a Schieber.

  The thing that most struck Wilderness was the number of prams and pushchairs. He reckoned about one in a hundred actually carried an infant—the rest were full of contraband. The odd copper moved among the crowd, but the sudden cessation of trade seemed to him be an act of caution and respect rather than convincing concealment—“let’s not flaunt it, let’s not fling it in his face.”

  Eddie said, “Of course most of it’s barter. Kettle, toaster, portrait of Frederick the Great that’s been in the family for a hundred years . . . all up for swapsies. All tradeable for anything you can eat or drink. I don’t know what the German is for junk . . .”

  “Ramsch.”

  “That’ll do nicely. There is no such thing as Ramsch any more. Every piece of crap has a value. I met a bloke just before Christmas selling his mother’s false teeth.”

  “Did you buy ’em?”

  Eddie’s point was being made in terms of tragedy not twenty feet away. A man held a violin in one hand and a cardboard and crayon sign in the other.

  Once owned by Adolph Busch. Will trade for shoes.

  Busch had been one of Rada’s favourites. She had wound up the gramophone and put on Busch playing Brahms or Schubert and made him listen. Of course it could be a lie . . . he might as readily have written Josef Kreutzer, but the expression on his face and the state of his shoes said otherwise.

  “The coppers don’t care much about swapsies. In fact they don’t care much about cash deals until someone back at the nick orders a Razzia, and then they’ll round up every man woman, kid, and dog. A show of force, mostly amounts to nothing . . . until the next time.”

  “What’s in demand?”

  “Right now . . . spuds. Last year’s st
ocks are running out about now.”

  “And we don’t do spuds?”

  “Nah . . . we’re in a different league. Follow me.”

  Eddie picked his way through the crowd to a van that sold hot drinks and soups. The chalked-up menu announced a choice of potato, parsnip, or pea soup.

  The proprietor nodded as he saw Eddie approach and moved to the back of the van.

  When they got round the back, the door opened and Eddie said, “Wie viele willst du heute, Fritzi?”

  And Fritzi replied, “Zwölf.”

  Eddie opened his greatcoat, like a bat spreading wings and Fritzi unhooked twelve bags of coffee from the cat’s cradle. A fat envelope full of reichsmarks vanished into Eddie’s pocket and they moved on.

  “You don’t count it?”

  “Nope. Trust matters.”

  “So does money.”

  “Which is why we agree a price every Wednesday. Price o’coffee changes all the time. And it never gets any cheaper. We agree a price and we stick to it.”

  “How many do you have left?”

  “Six. We’ll get rid of them between here and home. Not a day to be bothering with frilly knickers and perfume.”

  “Is Fritzi your biggest buyer?”

  “One of ’em. I’ve three or four blokes who buy big-time.”

  Big time was a troublesome phrase. Nothing about the Tiergarten Schwarzmarkt struck Wilderness as big time. He thought again of insects.

  “I don’t think I can do this, Ed.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t have a greatcoat.”

  “What? You lost it?”

  “No. I gave it away to a bloke in Hamburg looked like he was about to freeze to death. You’d have done the same.”

  A lie. Eddie, he knew, would have given away his shirt and trousers as well.

  “’S’OK. Pie Face can get you another out of stores.”

  So that was that, he was a Schieber. A nickel-and-dime, under-the-greatcoat Schieber. An insect.

  §99

  On the Monday morning, Wilderness reported to 45 Schlüterstraße—with no real idea to whom he was reporting.

  No. 45 was a few hundred yards from his digs, in a short stretch of Schlüterstraße, overlooking both the Kurfürstendamm and Lietzenburger Straße. It was a big, turn-of-the-century apartment building in the bourgeois style, five or six storeys high—a boastful, bulging frontage as though the building could not quite contain itself, and had blossomed into bay windows and roof dormers. It looked to have come through the war largely unscathed—a few chips and bullet scars on the columns either side of the row of steps leading up to the door, a street that had not been hard-fought.