Then We Take Berlin

by Lawton, John

  Wilderness leafed through the passport.

  “It’s fake?”

  “Of course it’s fake. But it’s a good one. Guys at Checkpoint Charlie will never spot it, ours or theirs.”

  “Then why do you need me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you can get hold of fake passports this good, why not just get one to the old woman and have her walk across? Why bother with the tunnel?”

  “No can do. She speaks no English, so it would have to be a West German passport. And she’d never stand up to questions. Retired schoolteacher. Toughest ordeal of her life was probably facing the PTA.”

  “That and living through the Allied bombing of Berlin and a secret life as a Jew in Nazi Germany.”

  “Whatever. You guys have a phrase for it . . . ‘Wouldn’t say boo to a gander’? Something like that. Anyway, there are Kraut fakes around, maybe even good ones, but even if I could get my hands on one the Ivans are wise to them. Getting East Berliners out has become something of a sport—maybe that’s understating it . . . maybe it’s a badge of honour among the new generation of Germans. Kids for whom the war is a distant memory, if that. Bunches of ’em have been trying to get Easterners out ever since the wall went up. The fake passport scam worked for a while, but it’s over. It’s become a one-way ticket to a labour camp. I couldn’t risk that. Besides . . .”

  He slid a brown envelope across to Wilderness. Wilderness opened it—a postcard-size photograph of an unsmiling young man of about twenty.

  “Manfred Oppitz. Student of Political Science, and leader of half a dozen idealistic kids who have been tunnelling. You need to meet with him.”

  “Tunnelling?”

  “Yep. Got twenty-nine out before the Russians shut ’em down. Twenty-fuckin-nine, Joe! And now . . . every sewer gate and manhole between East and West is welded shut.”

  “I don’t need tunnellers, I have a tunnel.”

  “I was coming to that. You do need this kid. The tunnel may well be intact, after all . . . has anyone been down it since you? I doubt it. But the Tiergarten end has been built on.”

  “You could have told me this yesterday.”

  “It’s not that bad. It’s just a car park for the zoo. Since you and I stomped around there the zoo’s got a lot bigger.”

  “Just a car park?”

  “Sure. It’s not as if they built the fuckin’ elephant house on it. A sheet of blacktop. That’s all. Last time you shifted tons of rubble—the remains of the goddam flak tower.”

  “Last time I had Fat Stanley, the Sappers Corps, and a couple of bulldozers.”

  “Fat Stanley? Whaddya know? Jeez. I had totally forgotten him. But, no matter. Don’t worry. This ought to be what you call a doddle and I call a cinch. You set it up. The kids do the digging. You get ten grand. They get another old Kraut, another feather in their caps.”

  “In a municipal car park? With traffic cops and Joe Public to contend with?”

  “You’ll think of a way. You always did. A few deutschmarks scattered around, grease a few palms, a few more fake documents, knock out another batch of inky smudges. Come on Joe, earn your ten grand.”

  “And where will you be?”

  “Good point. Goooood point. No real reason I should be in Berlin is there? At least not until Fraulein Schneider is out. London, I’ll be in London. At the Connaught. Call me when it’s over.”

  It was an inept choice of phrase, almost custom-made to remind Wilderness of the relationship that he and Frank used to have, “Call me when it’s over.” He could almost see him picking flecks of dust off his trouser turnups.

  “Yeah. I’ll do that. Although I’d hate to drag you away from dinner at the Ivy.”

  Frank was stuffing his face with ham and eggs, oblivious to sarcasm.

  “’S’OK. Just leave a message.”

  §181

  West Berlin: June 1963

  Frank’s arrangements did not skimp. Wilderness might have chosen somewhere quieter, somewhere off the main drag, but he could not argue with Frank’s generosity in picking the Kempinski Hotel. It was big and bold and shiny. Its name in huge letters along the curving roofline. It was a part of the new Berlin that was coming into being. Berlin never arrived. Berlin was always in the process of arriving, always giving birth, and by now Wilderness had concluded it would be that way for ever. A process rather than a place.

  In 1948 the Kempinski had been the ruin at the end of their street, bombed into oblivion by the RAF.

  Wilderness had checked in, had a martini in the bar, and after a second martini in the bar had felt nostalgic enough to want to wander down Fasanenstraße and look at the old apartment block he and Eddie Clark had lived in. He’d not done this on the last trip or the one before or the one before that. It had gone, and in its place something new was rising up behind the sheeting and the scaffolding and the labour pains. The RAF and the Luftwaffe had seemed lethal at the time, yet were as nothing compared to the post-war municipal wrecking ball. But . . . the synagogue had risen again. Very little of the original remained, but somehow the portico arch had been incorporated into a new building—it was now called the Jüdisches Gemeindehaus—in a modern style Wilderness could only think of as “chunky.” That was the thing about the new Berlin, it was “chunky.” Modernist slabs of flat concrete and plate glass that could leave the observer craving the ragged beauty of ruins—but Albert Speer had planned for ruins, had imagined all his grandiose designs in a state of decay many years hence and, if ruins were what one craved, Berlin still had enough of those to go round.

  He drifted on, southwards. At the far end of the street he stood on the corner of Lietzenburger Straße, once the non-line between the American Sector and the British, in front of the old Imperial Hotel. A Berlin summer evening, a time to stand and stare. The perfect post-martini, pre-Copernican moment—to be standing on a street comer and feel the world revolve around you.

  What surprised him now had surprised him on every visit since he had left in ’48. Trees. He’d never get used to trees in the Berlin streets. Living trees. Trees with leaves. Trees in bustin’ June blossom. Trees not waiting to be chopped up for fuel. Unter den Linden still hadn’t restored its lime trees—perhaps the DDR never would—but West Berlin had trees, a waving, rustling sea of green.

  On the other side of the street a short, stout-ish man—overdressed for the time of year, buttoned up to his chin in a dark green overcoat, a Tyrolean-style hat on his head—was staring back at him. Wilderness was about to cross when a pale yellow tram shot between them and blocked his view. When the tram had passed, the man had gone. What lingered was that the man had looked like Yuri Myshkin.

  §182

  At Checkpoint Charlie first the Americans and then the Russians had turned over every page in his passport scrutinised his visa and waved him through without requiring a word from him. He might never get to try out his American accent.

  He’d driven his rented Opel Rekord out to Pankow. The car was grey, relieved by a tasteless streak of blood red along each side. And he’d parked in front of this eight-storey slab of people’s apartments.

  It was just another plain block of flats in the Soviet style that had made East Germany a byword for grey and boring. Both words were too often invoked to describe not just its architecture but also its food, its people, and its culture. Wilderness had nothing against any of these. The flats seemed at least as practical as the tower blocks now dotted around East London and rising up like triffids all the way out to Dagenham—the people looked little different from the way they’d looked at the end of the war—fatter perhaps, but still fed on spuds and cabbage, a literally “grey” diet lacking protein and vitamins that dulled the skin and took the shine out of their eyes. Culture? Well, in the post-war carve-up they got Brecht. We got . . . God knows, he loathed the “university” wit of Kingsley Amis, he loathed that sodding professional Yorkshireman John Braine . . . perhaps the hope of England rested on this new bloke Alan Sillitoe. He had
read a couple of his books and thought they had bite. None of ’em were Brecht, but did Brecht make up for spuds and cabbage?

  He was daydreaming. Found himself staring up at the windows. He knew why. It was the name. It was the sort of thing only new, revolutionary, or self-inventing countries ever bothered with. They named streets after heroes. Even literary heroes. England seemed not to want to acknowledge its heroes and settled for naming everything after monarchs or battles—Victoria, Waterloo . . . one day some innocent tourist might enquire who King Euston was or where the Battle of Euston had taken place. This was Arnold-Zweig-Straße, named for the novelist of the Great War who’d gone on to be something big in East Germany’s arts, president of this, chairman of that. Somewhere in the East Zweig might still be alive. He’d be eighty-ish. He might even be living on Arnold-Zweig-Straße. Or if not then he’d probably be quite at home on Ibsenstraße or Zolastraße. Kingsley-Amistraße? God forbid.

  Apartment 606 was not on the sixth floor, it was on the fifth. Wilderness stopped dreaming, stopped guessing and rang the bell. A slow grinding followed as the clockwork mechanism ran down with no sound much resembling a bell—but it was enough to bring Hannah Schneider to her door.

  She looked at him across the chain that might keep out another old lady but wouldn’t last two seconds against a jackboot.

  “Herr Johnson?”

  “Schubert,” Wilderness said—the password he and Frank had agreed on.

  Hannah Schneider just looked baffled, then a look of enlightenment flickered in the nut-brown eyes.

  “Oh do forgive me . . . I am so unused to this sort of thing . . . Der Erlkönig. That is the reply?”

  And the chain slid off, the door swung open.

  “Bitte.”

  Every entrance was a world. Whether he’d been politely admitted by the front door or scrambled over the rooftops and in through a skylight, every entrance was a world, an invitation to a world made by someone else. A peeping tom’s delight. A gallery of symbols and signs, a carousel of slides waiting on him to be deciphered and rearranged into meaning—the world in a room, a life in a dozen objects.

  He turned around in the tiny sitting room, coming to face her.

  The room told him next to nothing. It looked like a stage set. Like am dram at the Hornchurch Players. Furnished from a props cupboard. It was pared down to blankness. It was beyond the minimalist habits of people accustomed to living in small spaces—even then there were a hundred variations on a theme, from those who kept nothing that didn’t serve a purpose, to those who hoarded everything, stacked everything and moved around in orderly piles of junk and clutter all but oblivious to it. This flat was spotless. Not a speck of dust. Not a cobweb. Not a smell of polish or disinfectant to mask emptiness or newness. As though it was uninhabited and had been vacuumed from top to bottom only hours before. The show flat in a sales brochure.

  She was looking at him now. Leaning on a walking stick—a prop in both senses. Not quite smiling, as though it were too much effort. Waiting for him to speak. She spoke first.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  It was the opposite of a Rada moment. Meeting Rada had become a benchmark in his life. Meeting any older woman automatically brought her and rather unfavourable comparisons to mind. No one ever measured up. Fraulein Schneider was a good-looking woman, who looked as though she had put on her makeup in the dark. The wig was silly. A grey bird’s nest with darker hair peeping out beneath it. At least when Merle had worn wigs the disguise was effective. Fraulein Schneider’s disguise simply drew attention to itself. The loose, flowery dress looked like something she’d never choose. The ratty cardigan with its woolly bobbles and holes at the elbows was a neat touch though.

  “Yes,” he said. “That would be nice.”

  “Please, be seated. I won’t be long.”

  She leaned her walking stick against a chair, and switched from putting weight on it to walking unaided, without a limp or any hint of pain. He watched her through the arch that separated the living bit from the kitchen bit. She lit a gas ring, stuck on a kettle and then opened a cupboard, then another and then a third and finally set out two mugs and a jar of instant coffee.

  There was a picture of Steve and a woman he took to be Debbie on the sideboard. He’d seen an identical photograph in Steve’s office. There were books on a shelf next to the gas fire, set in the wall. The selection seemed random. A battered hardback of one of Fontane’s historical epics, a translation of Irwin Shaw’s The Young Lions, Goethe’s Elective Affinities—and a dozen more, all looking as though they had been bought by the yardage on a market stall. Visual ballast. The only thing that rang remotely true was there that there was a novel by Arnold Zweig—Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa. And how many copies of that had been printed East or West in the last forty years?

  It was tempting to open the cupboards and peek inside drawers, but he knew that he’d find nothing. They’d all be empty.

  She down opposite him. Set a small tray in front of him. Milk jug. Sugar bowl, teaspoons, and two mugs. They all looked new. He could see where she’d scraped the price tag off the jug with her thumbnail. No one was trying too hard. She sat in a room that reflected nothing of her. The invisible threads that might have connected her to her surroundings were not there. She touched, there was no other word for it . . . she touched nothing. She brought her own space with her, a translucent, almost visible pocket that surrounded her like a vacuum. She held herself too tightly, as though stitched and buttoned against an unwelcome reality. If he asked her now how she had survived in Berlin what would she say? Would there be a prepared story of being hidden by Aryans and dodging Greifers, or of false identity papers or submitting to a tribunal and convincing them she wasn’t Jewish. There was not a single item in the room to say she was. And in his East End childhood, where every other neighbour was a Jew, Wilderness didn’t think he’d ever met one, however godless, of whom that could be said.

  “May I say right now, at the beginning, that I am very grateful to you. To you, to Steven, and to his friend.”

  “Frank? You mean Frank Spoleto?”

  “Yes, of course. Herr Spoleto. Such a kind man.”

  “But you’ve never met him.”

  “No . . . I never met him, but he has . . . arranged all this.”

  It seemed to Wilderness that she had barely withheld the gesture of an open hand sweeping the room. She was allowing him to think that she was referring to the operation. That Frank had brokered the deal. And Freud had led her almost to the edge of truth. That Frank had arranged all this in the most literal and immediate sense. Her “never met him” was a lie. Frank’s implied “never met her” was just another unspoken lie.

  “Will I have to wait long?”

  “No,” he said. “Not long. It may take a few days. Perhaps ten at the most. From the end of next week, be ready to travel. Pack a bag and leave it packed.”

  “A tunnel, I believe. Will I have to crawl? Will I get wet or dirty? I only ask as it might help to know what to wear.”

  “I can’t tell you about dirt or damp at the moment. I need to check one or two things first. But, no you won’t have to crawl.”

  He answered all her questions. Not once did she ask about Steve or Debbie, although he made it obvious he’d seen Steve recently. Not once did she show anticipation about America, about arriving in New York. Not once did she express any emotion about things or people she might leave behind. Her questions were precise and practical. He told her it would all run smoothly, and left it at that.

  As he was leaving, on the threshold, she said, far too casually, “I suppose you will have much to do in the next few days?”

  “Quite a lot,” he replied and then added in English. “Wish me luck.”

  “Of course,” she replied.

  §183

  He was furious with Frank. Frank was shafting him again and was too damn lazy even to do it well.

  §184

  He went in search o
f Erno Schreiber. Erno had not moved. Erno would never move. He was still in the same building in Grünetümmlerstraße he was living in when Wilderness first met him in 1947. He was lucky Berlin had not demolished it around him.

  “How long has it been, Joe?”

  “Only a couple of years Erno. Your memory must be playing up if it seems longer than that.”

  “So, so . . . I am getting old. Rub it in, why don’t you.”

  He led Wilderness to the back of the room, down corridors of newspapers. As big a tip as ever. Wilderness could almost swear the pile of magazines teetering on the tabletop was the same one he’d seen in ’61, ’58, or ’47. Erno hadn’t added to it. He’d probably taken nothing off it. He hadn’t even dusted.

  Only the cat was new. Hegel had gone to the great linen basket in the sky. This one was tabby.

  Erno put a match to a gas ring, set a kettle to boil.

  “What can I do for you, Joe?”

  “Same old thing, Erno.”

  He handed him the American passport in the name of James Johnson.

  “You want me to copy it?”

  “No. I want to know who faked it.”

  Erno flicked on an anglepoise lamp. It shed its hoop of light onto his worktop, the only spotless point in the room, a fresh sheet of blotting paper every day—and yesterday’s burnt.

  Erno took several minutes to go through the passport. Every page under scrutiny.

  “You go East on this?”

  “Just once, so far.”

  He took a magnifying glass to the personal details page. After a minute or so more, he swapped this for a jeweller’s eyepiece, and when he took that out he turned to Wilderness and said, “Fake? What fake? This is real.”

  “Real American? Made in America?”

  “Pure Uncle Sam. Where did you get it?”

  Wilderness paused. But Erno had never let him down.

  “From Frank,” he said.

  Erno chuckled.

  “Oh my God. You and Frank together again? Joe, Joe, Joe . . . he’ll steal your trousers while you take a crap. He told you this was a fake? Now why would he want you to think that?”