Then We Take Berlin

by Lawton, John

  First Wilderness and then Frank, swallowing hastily to avoid choking but still showering them with crumbs, burst out laughing.

  Eddie grinned from ear to ear.

  “They just took the crappy old ostmark and stuck a coupon on it. You know what they make the glue from?”

  Wilderness could not speak for giggles. Frank was spraying out crumbs and wurst faster than a Maxim gun.

  “Taters,” Eddie concluded.

  He took another dozen notes from his pockets and waved them in the air and a shower of confetti covered the table.

  Tosca looked up from her book. The stern librarian annoyed by a whisper.

  Wilderness snatched a note out of the air.

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t bloody believe it. It’s pure Mickey Mouse. What a bunch of clowns. Potato paste. I don’t bloody believe it. I used to make that to stick pictures in my scrapbook when I was a nipper. They all fell off too.”

  Then, the merest shift of gear, a moment of high seriousness.

  “Frank, we’re not accepting this crap are we?”

  “Are you kidding. Dollars only. You think I don’t listen to you? Dollars only, you said. On the nail. Yuri wouldn’t dare offer us shit like this.”

  §138

  Nell had known Ernst Reuter as long as she could remember. He and her father had worked alongside each other at City Hall. Since she returned to Berlin she had not seen him, but then, who had she seen? He had been elected mayor, but the Russians had refused to acknowledge this. He was de facto mayor of West Berlin—a place that didn’t quite exist. The Russians could obstruct and divide—they could in all probability assassinate him or simply kidnap him off the streets as they did with hundreds of others, but they didn’t . . . and short of that they could not shut him up.

  That summer, the summer of the roaring planes and the power cuts, Reuter addressed Berlin in the open air half a dozen times. Each time the crowd was bigger. In a crowd it is impossible to tell whether you are one of three thousand or thirty thousand. Later on newspapers will tell you—and none of them will agree.

  Late in August, Nell stood at the eastern end of the Tiergarten in front of the Reichstag. She had learnt of this meeting from one of the American RIAS vans that toured the British and American sectors, using loudspeakers to create street-corner radio.

  Reuter was not wearing his beret—his trademark as recognisable as Churchill’s cigar and FDR’s cigarette holder. Today he looked less like a bohemian and more like a leader, even to the carnation in his buttonhole.

  “People of this world, people in America, in England, in France, in Italy! Look at this city and recognise that you must not give up this city, you must not give up its people . . . Berliners don’t want to be an object of exchange . . . we can’t be traded in, we can’t be negotiated and no one can sell us . . . In this city a bulwark, an outpost of freedom has been erected, which nobody can give up with impunity. Anyone who would give up this city and its people would give up a whole world and even more he would give up himself . . . People of the world! You also should do your duty and help us through the times that lie ahead of us, not just with the roar of your planes . . . but with the steadfast and indestructible guarantee of the common ideals that can secure our future and secure yours. People of the world, look at Berlin! And people of Berlin, be assured we will win this fight.”

  “Völker der Welt, schaut auf Berlin! Und Volk von Berlin, sei dessen gewiß, diesen Kampf, den wollen, diesen Kampf, den werden wir gewinnen!”

  The crowd did not simply drift away. Inspired by what they read between the lines, they surged towards the Brandenburg Gate, through the arches and into Pariser Platz, just as a routine Russian patrol was heading the other way.

  The Russian GAZ jeep was surrounded.

  At first the four soldiers sat still as though waiting for the tide to pass.

  “Stalin ’raus, Stalin ’raus”—a cry soon taken up by hundreds of voices.

  Nell followed and found herself edged aside as British soldiers forced their way in from the Western side.

  And then the Red Flag of the Soviet Union floated down from the top of the arch—someone had climbed up the internal staircase and cut it loose from the quadriga. As symbolic a gesture as the day in May 1945 when the first Russians to reach the Brandenburg Gate had put it there.

  What Red Army soldier worth his ration could sit by and watch? All four got out of the jeep and tried to retrieve the flag—using the butts of their rifles they forced protesters aside only to find they had waded into jelly, an amorphous, amoebic mass that parted around them only to flow on and enclose them once more. And still they were no nearer the flag—and the flag was ripped to shreds and a cloud of red confetti blew past their heads in shards of fury.

  No one would ever know who fired the first shot.

  A stone thrown into a pond.

  The crowd spreading out in ripples.

  And at the epicentre was not one jeep but two.

  The second jeep was British, and the driver lay slumped facedown over the wheel with blood gushing from the wound in his side.

  §139

  They were talking only of something and nothing. Passing the time at Paradies Verlassen. Chewing the fat as Frank put it in a tasteless image.

  Eddie was doing a crossword—in German. Frank was on his fourth or fifth beer and holding forth or fifth on baseball—as with any sport Frank launched into, Wilderness tuned out and nodded at regular intervals.

  “God didn’t mean anyone to be left-handed. Ain’t natural. I mean, you look at the number of home runs Bill Dickey scored in the 1940 season compared to DiMaggio . . .”

  Pie Face burst in. Saved Wilderness from throttling Frank.

  “We got trouble!”

  “What?”

  “Some argy-bargy in Pariser Platz. Spud blundered into it and got himself shot.”

  Frank said, “Cool it, kid. Just sit down and just tell us what happened. Who shot Spud?”

  But Pie Face was not in any mood to be cooled. It seemed to Wilderness that his rage was hungry and needed to be fed, and was better fed standing, looming over them.

  “Dunno. There was plenty of Russkis about, but our blokes were there too.”

  “And Americans?”

  “Nah, Frank. You was late again, just like 1914 and 1939. Never there when you’re fuckin’ needed.”

  Wilderness felt Frank stir and kicked him under the table. Frank said nothing.

  “Is he OK?”

  “Dunno. He ain’t dead. Our blokes got an ambulance.”

  “Who got the jeep?”

  “Fuckin’ Ada, Joe. Is that really the next question? Who got the jeep? The Russians got the jeep, din’t they? It was in the Russian fuckin’ Sector wasn’t it? But you needn’t worry. Spud had delivered. All they’ll find are empty jerry cans. He was on his way back.”

  “Frank, can you find out which hospital?”

  “Sure. A couple of phone calls.”

  A stony silence. No one spoke and Pie Face did not sit. Turned around like a slowly spinning top, as though searching for words that eluded the tip of his tongue.

  Wilderness said, “You need a drink, mate.”

  “Maybe I do, Joe. But not with you lot. You blokes are playing too fast and loose for us both. Joe, Joe . . . the way you’re going on you’re going to get us all killed. We’ve been lucky till today . . . but if you think about it for half a minute we could have been busted any time. It’s a bleedin’ miracle the MPs have never turned us over. We just sailed by right under their noses. There’s blokes been banged up in the glasshouse for a fraction of what we’ve done. We’ve got away with everything short of bloody murder. But it ain’t searches now . . . it ain’t even some copper too stupid to do a proper search or who’ll turn a blind eye for a bung. It’s guns and bullets. And it’s poor bastards getting shot. And it’s over. It’s all over. So, sorry an’ all that, but include me out.”

  Wilderness spoke to get in ahead of anything
stupid Frank might say.

  “That’s OK. I understand. We’ll divvy up and you’ll get your share.”

  “Nah, mate. You keep it. I don’t want it. I won’t touch it. It feels like dirty money all of a sudden.”

  §140

  When Pie Face had gone, Frank said, “Did he just tell us to go fuck ourselves?”

  “Yes, but there was another point to what he said.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “We need another way.”

  “We do?”

  “One day they’ll stop us going into the Soviet Sector altogether. One day quite soon. Our MPs have already stopped going in.”

  “They can’t do that. It’s not part of the deal. Yalta or Potsdam or Timbuktu, whatever. They come over here whenever they like. We get to do the same. OK, so there’s more checks and more barbed wire. We’ve always passed checks. No one was wise to us. Even Pie Face admits that. It’s not as if they’re going to rip a British jeep apart is it?”

  It occurred to Wilderness that “they” might be doing that right now, but he let Frank finish.

  “They’ll frisk all the civilians they want. I’d be amazed if they bother with us.”

  “I meant our own people will stop us. It’s beginning to look dangerous. They won’t want to provoke incidents. Spud getting shot is already an incident.”

  “So what are we looking for? A flying carpet?”

  “No,” Wilderness said. “A tunnel.”

  §141

  “What I need is . . . a tunnel.”

  “God I hate irony.”

  “Where’s the irony?”

  “We cremated a man who could have shown you every tunnel under Berlin last January.”

  “Your father?”

  “Berlin City Engineer. Until the Volkssturm that is. He knew Berlin belowground better than he knew the streets above.”

  Nell turned over to sleep.

  Wilderness said, “But . . . Berlin can’t do without a city engineer. So . . . who has your father’s job now?”

  She turned back to him, tired or exasperated or both.

  “It hardly matters, does it?”

  “Of course it matters.”

  “Drop it, Wilderness. Just let this one go.”

  “You won’t help me?”

  “Why should I help you with your . . . rackets?”

  “You’ve always known what I did. And . . .”

  “And?”

  “It’s only money. We don’t hurt anyone.”

  Nell lay back on the pillow.

  “As I said. I hate irony. The current city engineer is my father’s old deputy. Andreas von Jeltsch-Fugger.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “It’s no sillier than your Smythe-Brownes or your Bentinck-Cavendishes. He’s the father of Werner Fugger, the boy you so annoyed the night we met and on every occasion since, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

  “Not much irony in that. He’s a prick.”

  Up on one elbow now, flicking tiredness away with a jerk of her head and an errant lock of her hair.

  “No, Wilderness. That’s not the irony. The irony is that after the war, the British being so suspicious of men with aristocratic names, all those vons and zus, made the assumption that they were all Nazis and for nearly two years Andreas could not work, until he got his Persilschein—got his Persilschein from you! Because, after all, you’re not a snob are you?”

  The sarcasm and the irony fought to the death in his mind in less than a second, and he said, “Can you get him to meet me?”

  “I want nothing to do with your rackets. I told you.”

  “And I told you. We’re harmless. Honestly.”

  “Harmless?”

  She squirmed nearer to him, nudged his left arm with her head until he wrapped it around her.

  “Hold me, stupid.”

  “Why?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “Of course not. But you have one all the same.”

  “I saw a man shot today. A Tommie. Just like you. Harmless, just like you.”

  §142

  He was surprised the name had not stuck in his mind. But the man had. He’d been one of the first he’d interviewed at Schlüterstraße, in the first or second week of February in 1947. The face was the face of an aristocrat, the sort to drive the Pooters and Yatemans of England to seething, silent fury—the long, aquiline nose, not unlike the late SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich, the domed forehead, the fuller top lip, the pale blue eyes. And the middle two fingers and the top joint of his thumb on the right hand were missing—a war wound from the Russian front in the First World War. The arm rose weakly, hand to his lips, every so often as he dragged on a cigarette from a small black holder wedged between the stumps of the missing fingers.

  “It had its upside,” he had told Wilderness. “I cannot hold a rifle, cannot pull a trigger or shoulder a Panzerfaust. Hence I was of no use to Hitler, even when he rounded up the old men and boys in ’45.”

  He’d been a member of the party, for the token reasons any employee of the city would give and had hung Hitler’s portrait on his office wall as instructed. At the time, Wilderness had not sought to enquire further and had certainly never logged the precise nature of the man’s occupation.

  With no Yateman-Pooter to stand over him and argue the toss, Wilderness had granted him his Persilschein and wished him well. He had warmed to the man—it was, perhaps, his asking him if he liked Berlin that tipped the balance—as though he’d been talking to a welcome visitor of his own age and interests, not an interrogator half his age with the power to lock him up.

  And then, a ludicrous sense of courtesy had led Wilderness to show Andreas von Jeltsch-Fugger out, and he had caught his first glimpse of Nell. As Jeltsch-Fugger reached the staircase, Nell had dashed down from the next floor, pecked him on the cheek and he had embraced her with his good arm.

  It flashed by him now like a silent film upon a dusty scrim.

  Nell had been the memory. A memory so strong she had erased the context, just like the old Dick Powell song from before the war, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” and for a year or more Jeltsch-Fugger had been just one more German, a German he had happened to be seeing out when the vision that was Nell first hit him. Were the stars out tonight?

  “How pleasant to see you again, Herr Holderness,” Jeltsch-Fugger was saying.

  Wilderness gently freed himself from the starless daydream. And the Nell of memory merged with the Nell who was in the room with them.

  The room was a small, empty café in a side street off Potsdamer Platz where three of the four Allied sectors met—three not four, but who bothered much about the French? Once, a year or two ago, there’d been a painted boundary criss-crossing the cobbles and the tram lines of Potsdamer Platz, demarcating the sectors, British, Russian, American. They had been scuffed out of existence by a million feet, and no one had bothered to repaint them. Wilderness was not wholly certain which sector the café sat in, the British or the American. Ambiguous. And anonymous—but for the name, Der Kater Murr.

  Wilderness had thought better of inviting Frank and Eddie. If this worked they’d find out then. If it didn’t, they’d never know.

  Nell was effusive. Her reservations were not overcome, but Wilderness knew she’d never be less than demonstrative. Things—no, people—mattered too much to her. Jeltsch-Fugger was, after Erno and her father, only the third person he’d met who’d known her as a child—or, as she put it herself, “before,” and before what need never be stated.

  She hugged him to embarrassment, both arms around his chest—Jeltsch-Fugger smiling politely at Wilderness over the top of her head.

  Breaking loose she said, “This is my godfather. One of nature’s gentlemen. And this is my lover. One of nature’s rogues.”

  “Au contraire, Hélène. The last time we met Herr Holderness was courtesy itself.”

  And the broken right hand was extended for Wilderness to shake.

  They sat
at a corner table. A round of small talk as the waiter set coffee in front of them. The smell alone was telling, best NAAFI dark roast. Eddie had sold it to the proprietor personally.

  “How can I help you, Herr Holderness?”

  “I’m trying to . . . to ease the tension between East and West . . .”

  “He’s a smuggler, Andreas,” Nell chipped in.

  “Difficult times, Hélène. The man who finds you half a pound of butter today may go down in history as well regarded as any man who fought at Austerlitz or Waterloo. I say again, how may I help you, Herr Holderness?”

  “I need a tunnel under Berlin. There are things I need to get from West to East without interference.”

  “Things?”

  Wilderness tapped the side of his cup gently with a teaspoon.

  “Ah . . . I see . . . baccy for the parson, brandy for the clerk, and coffee for the commissar?”

  Who would have thought a German aristocrat knew Kipling? All the same it saved Wilderness precious words.

  “Nell tells me you know the tunnels better than anyone.”

  Jeltsch-Fugger tilted his head slightly, the merest nod, a sip of coffee.

  “The Nazis flooded Berlin’s tunnels as the Russians advanced in ’45. Breached the Spree and let the river in. I assume you knew this? So, we are looking at something deeper. Something below the swamp on which my ancestors built Berlin, below the impermeable clay. I believe there is such a tunnel. I was with Max Burkhardt the last time he inspected it in 1939. I didn’t make the descent, but I was there. I cannot vouch for the state of the tunnel after . . . after . . .”

  “After what the RAF did to Berlin?”

  “Quite. But I know the two entrances.”

  “And it crosses the line?”

  “Runs under the Spree at the island, from Monbijou Park to the zoo, just by the flak tower. I’d say it crosses the line pretty well under Pariser Platz. About a hundred and fifty feet under Pariser Platz.”

  “That’s as deep as the Piccadilly Line.”

  “It is indeed. I had the pleasure of inspecting your London Underground in 1932. But this was built without boring shields or machines of any kind. Neither I nor Max were able to find out precisely when it was built. But that in itself made the subject all the more fascinating. One can weave fantasies around such a structure. We think it was built most likely in the reign of Frederick Wilhelm II, which would be the last decade of the 1700s. Certainly no later than 1805. That’s the year Monbijou Palace ceased to be a royal residence for spurned wives and ageing dowagers. After that I cannot think why anyone would have bothered to build it . . . and only royals would have had the money. In fact, even allowing for the folly of kings it’s both amusing and impossible to imagine why it was built. It goes nowhere.”