Then We Take Berlin

by Lawton, John

  The anger was palpable.

  The tone of the visit was about to change.

  “Here,” she said. “This is your hook. Say ‘Let them come to Berlin’ at the end of each statement. Build up the emphasis. I will be translating for you, I shall do my best to be as emphatic in German as you are in English. But the last time say it in German. Just the last. You say. ‘Laßt sie nach Berlin kommen,’ and then I will repeat exactly what you said word for word . . . I shall be less your interpreter and more your echo.”

  Kennedy liked this.

  “It has . . . passion.”

  “It should. I’m passionate about Berlin.”

  “You’re a Berliner, right?”

  “Ich bin ein Berliner,” Nell said, the metaphorical foot stamping down, the po-face rippling into a smile.

  “Would you mind writing that down.”

  Nell flipped an index card and wrote “Ich bin ein Berliner” on the back.

  He looked over, said, “Say it again, slowly.”

  She watched as Kennedy wrote down a sloppy phonetic of the phrase.

  “Ish bin ein Bearleener.”

  “I think we’re done,” he said.

  §200

  If pressed Nell could probably have recited Kennedy’s speech in either language in full, even years after.

  Her ad hoc, instant memory was of the crowd . . .

  “Ken-Ned-Dy Ken-Ned-Dy.”

  Half a million, a million—who could tell?—Berliners on the street.

  “Ken-Ned-Dy Ken-Ned-Dy.”

  At lunch, immediately afterwards, Kennedy had Nell moved up the table. Not next to him, but where with a little leaning and tilting of the head he could address remarks to her. His capacity for chitchat did not surprise or disappoint her. You worked for Brandt you got used to flirting. What stuck in her mind was nothing he said to her, it was a remark to one of the generals, and there seemed to be so many US generals, “If I told them to they’d tear down the wall with their bare hands.”

  “Ken-Ned-Dy Ken-Ned-Dy.”

  At a quarter to six Air Force One took off from Tegel and Nell heard the slow hiss as the balloon deflated.

  §201

  Nell went back to her office. It felt like one of the longest days of her life. To go home would have been both sensible and impractical.

  She rearranged the pencils on her desk in order of length. Brandt had jumbled the pencils. Brandt had left a note.

  Can that man never stick to a script? Let me know if the Wall is still there in the morning. WB

  To pass without incident—that had been Brandt’s phrase. Kennedy had been the “incident,” as much as the tanks that had squared off on either side of Checkpoint Charlie two years ago. Kennedy had been the “incident.” And she had made it worse. Brandt had sent her in there to keep Kennedy on script, and she’d helped him raise the temperature of the cold war to simmering—“Laßt sie nach Berlin kommen!” Perhaps a million joyous Berliners would tear down the wall. Or pigs might fly.

  She thought of Reuter’s speech, all those years ago.

  “Look at Berlin.”

  Reuter had urged no action on anyone. And, as far as she knew, had never had the arrogance to say it in private either. Still, hundreds had swarmed through the Brandenburg Gate into Pariser Platz, and if there’d been a wall then all Reuter would have had to do was tell them and they too would have torn it down with their bare hands. And the Russians would have slaughtered them.

  She sat back in an armchair, put her head on the rest. It was almost seven o’clock and still the crowds were on the streets. Occasionally a burst of “Ke-Ned-Dy” would come up from the square, as Berlin threw itself a party. She stretched out her legs, closed her eyes . . . “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy” . . . and found her mind overlaid the chant with the sounds of an older Berlin . . . of nights punctuated by gunfire . . . of the constant hum and burr of planes low in the sky over Tempelhof and Tegel. And for a while she was back in Grünetümmlerstraße, half-sleeping, half-waking, curled into Wilderness’s arm as the sounds of the city drifted into their attic room.

  §202

  Wilderness weighed it up. He’d not anticipated quite this situation. The streets were still full of people two hours after Kennedy had flown out of Tegel. It seemed like a million West Berliners were out to celebrate . . .

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy.”

  Getting to the checkpoint on Bornholmer Straße meant dodging hundreds of people jaywalking and sitting without retaliation as a bunch of teenagers pounded a tattoo on the roof of his tiny NSU Prinz to the beat of “From Me to You” by the Beatles. Da da da—da da—da da daah. “If there’s anything that you want”—it might have been the Schieber’s anthem.

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Deee.”

  Half a dozen times Wilderness braked for kids in the road, and caught the same word over and over again—Waschmaschine . . . washing machine. He’d chosen the car to be inconspicuous. It wasn’t. It was a tinny rear-engined joke, a washing machine on wheels. One he’d dump in Monbijou Park.

  There had been something clinical, almost frail about Checkpoint Charlie. It was just a couple of sheds, and however long it might be there it would always look as temporary as a London prefab. Less ideological boundary than level crossing. The bridge at Bornholmer Straße was altogether different—the real thing. Vast, ugly, dirty. A great metal maw yawning into the sky over rusting railway tracks, bank upon bank of sun-eclipsing floodlights and vicious spirals of barbed wire. Mouth, eyes, teeth—the moloch of Metropolis. A fitting place for the meeting of worlds.

  At the bridge there were more guards than usual—staring into the West at the distant party to which they hadn’t been invited. Noses pressed against the windowpane. But, then, they didn’t know what to expect of this day any more than he did. And if they were all guarding the wall there were fewer of them on the streets of East Berlin.

  They glanced at his passport, noted down the number of his car, asked the purpose of his visit.

  “Meine Familie,” Wilderness replied, and they waved him on.

  As he passed Wilderness heard one of them say “Waschmaschine” and the sound of West Berlin faded to nothing.

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy.”

  Now not even a whisper.

  He’d be grateful for the silence of the East. It was unearthly. A silence that seemed only to amplify his own thoughts. It went with the smell of the East, all those farting Trabants, all those belching chimneys, but for once he’d be glad of it.

  §203

  Marte Mayerling was dressed as Marte Mayerling. Standing in the sitting room at Arnold-Zweig-Straße, bag packed, waiting for him. No baggy frock, no ratty cardigan. A neat two-piece outfit in tasteless brown—flat, sensible shoes—a collapsible umbrella she telescoped and shoved in the bag.

  “You’re supposed to be Hannah Schneider.”

  “The pretence has no meaning any more.”

  “It never did have meaning—but it does matter.”

  “To whom?”

  “To the plan—there are people expecting Hannah Schneider.”

  “People?”

  “People willing to risk their lives to help you.”

  “To help me or to help Hannah Schneider?”

  It was pointless arguing. He hefted her bag and took it out to the car. It was a short, silent ride to Monbijou.

  He could tell her that the plan Frank had cooked up required her to be Hannah Schneider for a day or so, but he didn’t give a damn about Frank’s plan.

  He could tell her that he wanted time to get clear of the whole cockamamy scheme before her identity was revealed, that he had no intention of ending up as Frank’s fall guy—but that was showing his hand. Besides she despised him. He was ein Menschenhändler—a trafficker in human souls. She’d never do him that favour.

  §204

  It was close to impossible. She’d driven north from the Rathaus as far as Hardenbergstraße. The Kennedy motorcade had driven down Hardenbergstraße. It was a
mess of confetti and paper strips, and it was full of revellers.

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy.”

  About a kilometre from Zoo Station Nell abandoned her state-of-the-art VW Beetle and decided to walk. Six men wanted to kiss her before she reached the station, one even picked her up momentarily, swept her off her feet, whirled her around and set her down again without a word and without looking back.

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy.”

  It would be close to the longest day of the year, but nine o’clock had passed, the day was creeping towards the crepuscular—the station was lit up and the perimeter lights were coming on all around the zoo. Somewhere beyond the zoo was a blacked-out car park she must have passed many times without even noticing it was there.

  §205

  Wilderness and Marte Maylering sat on the spiral steps ten feet below the surface at the zoo end. She was impatient.

  “We’re safe now, surely? We must have passed under the wall half an hour ago.”

  Nothing was ever safe in the world of Frank Spoleto. Nothing was safe in the shadow of Rumpelstiltskin. Wilderness would not even begin to contemplate “safe” until he’d delivered her into the hands of Manfred Oppitz.

  “Trust me,” he said to no reaction.

  He looked at his watch. It was 9:45. Oppitz was due now, Oppitz was late. He’d even gone through the cinematic farce of synchronising his watch with Wilderness’s—something Wilderness had never done in thirteen years as a spy—and still he was late.

  Wilderness had said, “Don’t be early. I don’t want you hanging about attracting attention. Don’t be late either, once we’re out of the tunnel I want us away.”

  It occurred to him that Georg Kies was a physics student and would probably know Mayerling on sight, but he’d deal with that when it happened—it was all part of Frank’s plot and he’d lost Frank’s plot. A simple “shut up” would suffice. He’d hand Mayerling/Schneider up to them in their van and he’d walk away. Make of it what they might.

  From above he could hear the honking of car horns, and in a lull the chant reached him again, born on a breeze of intoxicated joy . . .

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Deee.”

  And it occurred to him that Berlin was in gridlock, and the silly sods were simply stuck in traffic.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Just wait. Something’s gone wrong. They’re late. I’m going up to look.”

  He stepped out of the awning. Past the steel plate propped up against the mound of rubble they had cleared. Looked around. A couple of rockets bursting in the sky somewhere over Wedding, a swell of “Ke-Ned-Dy” resounding over Tiergarten. It looked as though the party would go on all night.

  He stood several minutes staring in the direction Oppitz’s van would come from, willing it to turn up, just willing it to turn up before anyone else did.

  §206

  Nell could see two triangular municipal signs in the mid-distance, but could not read them in the diminishing light. Only when she drew close.

  Public Works in Progress

  A joke description for what Wilderness was up to.

  And behind her, monotonous now, irritating, boring . . .

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Deee.”

  She stood between the signs, watched as a man walked towards her. Only when she saw his right hand emerge from his jacket clutching a gun was she certain it was Wilderness.

  The gun was aimed at her now.

  “Joe. Don’t you know me?”

  “Oh Christ, Nell. What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t holster the gun. It dangled now around his right thigh, his finger still in the trigger guard.

  She didn’t know what she was doing there.

  They stared at one another. Perhaps a whole minute passed without speaking.

  She saw movement over Wilderness’s left shoulder. A figure, hunched low, a shadow outlined against the white awning. She raised her hand, pointed and said, “Joe, behind you.”

  Wilderness turned.

  A ragged Trümmerfrau had appeared, her head wrapped in a scarf, a billowing skirt, moving in and out of the moonlight shadows, cutting a curious path towards them, clutching a piece of trash she had found—

  a wooden crutch, or a broken chair.

  Then he saw the broken chair leg for what it was. A British Army Sten gun—and as the gun levelled on him he fired twice. His first shot missed, the second lifted the “old woman” off her feet. Then the clip jammed.

  He walked towards the body. Dropped the clip, banged in the spare and took aim at the head. The headscarf and the wig had slipped from Yuri Myshkin. It wasn’t Yuri Myshkin, it was Rumpelstiltskin. It wasn’t Rumpelstiltskin, it was Hannah Schneider. It wasn’t Hannah Schneider, it was Marte Mayerling. Marte Mayerling in a ratty cardigan. Marte Mayerling coughing blood, still clutching her telescopic umbrella.

  She sat bolt upright, spine straight, legs splayed, a rag doll dropped from the toy-box, and pointed at Wilderness with the umbrella..

  “So, this is how you wanted me?”

  From the roaring city behind them . . .

  “Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Dy Ke-Ned-Deee.”

  And a line from childhood was running unstoppable through Wilderness’s mind, “ . . . it really was just a kitten.”

  And Marte Mayerling was rambling too, “So I dress up in rags . . . so he shoots me . . .”

  Wilderness said nothing. Stared at the slowly widening puddle of blood emerging from beneath her skirts like the piss stain of incontinence.

  “So he shoots me?”

  Wilderness said nothing. He stood, the gun loose in his right hand, felt Nell’s hand slip into his left, her fingers threading themselves into his, weaving one hand, forming one fist, heard her voice soft and elegiac in his ear.

  “Oh my God, Wilderness, what have we done?”

  Stuff

  What is this? Book ten, maybe book eleven? Anyway, I’m hoping for a pile big enough to sit on the day I am so broke I have to burn the furniture. Writing most of them has led me to rely upon, rip off, scam . . . dozens of memoirists and historians. Two in particular have gone unacknowledged—an oversight I correct somewhat guiltily now.

  Looking at the obituaries early in 2011 I realised that George Clare had died while I was writing A Lily of the Field, a novel which learnt a lot from his Last Waltz in Vienna (Macmillan, 1980). In 2011 I was at work on this novel, which derives just as much from his second volume of memoirs, Berlin Days (Macmillan, 1989). Thus prompted, I decided to look up Madeleine Henrey on the Internet—she had died in 2004. Again I hadn’t noticed. If nothing else this ought to teach me to read the Daily Telegraph more often. As an old friend once remarked, “nobody dies in the Grauniad.” (It’s OK. You don’t have to read the editorials but if you don’t look at the letters from time to time half the gags in Private Eye will mean nothing to you. Reading the obits is a treat. Novels in miniature. The one on the late Tony, Lord Moynihan being a classic of its kind. None of them will turn you into a raving Tory, and if they do I will mercifully shoot you.)

  Madeleine Henrey wrote over thirty books, mostly as Robert Henrey or Mrs. Robert Henrey. She was French, but wrote in English and it’s even been suggested that her choice of noms de plume might be a reflection of her husband’s involvement in her work. In particular, and in rapid succession, she produced three volumes of war memoirs depicting life with a small child in a modern flat in Shepherd Market (just off Piccadilly) during the Second World War. They appeared as A Village in Piccadilly (Dent, 1942), The Incredible City (Dent, 1944), and The Siege of London (Dent, 1946). Around 1980 Dent reissued them, edited down, as a single volume, but all editions have long been out of print. They are the most vivid, detailed account of the minutiae of London life during the war that I know of. I’ve used details from all three at various times and in various books. Perhaps one day they will all be in print again.

  George Clare was born Georg Klaar in Vienna. He escaped to E
ngland, was interned, allowed to serve (like so many Austrian and German refugees) in the Pioneer Corps—the regiment of ditch-digging lawyers—transferred to the Royal Artillery, and, when the victorious Allies finally needed German-speakers, posted to Berlin where he interrogated Germans as part of the denazification process. Perhaps because he wrote his books forty years later, they have a much racier, more contemporary feel than Mrs. Henrey’s, but George Clare wrote history like a novelist, detail floats down off him like autumn leaves, anecdote rolls out as vivid as yesterday. Who else would bother to record that the Army badge of the British occupying forces (black disc in a red ring) was known as a “septic arsehole”?

  He too is out of print.

  Every trip back in time yields new discoveries . . . in this case . . .

  Aftermath by Francesca M. Wilson (Penguin, 1947), a Newnham bluestocking who worked with UNRRA in Bavaria in 1945-46 among refugees and former POWs, and seems to have had the most wonderful ear and memory.

  Hamburg 1947: A Place for the Heart to Kip (iUniverse, 2011) by Harry Leslie Smith, a working-class lad from Yorkshire who found himself posted to Hamburg as an RAF wireless operator in the immediate aftermath of the war. Again a wonderful ear and memory at work. I came across the book rather late in the writing of this one, but it answered questions about Hamburg that had been dogging me for ages. And whilst Miss Wilson’s remarkable career is documented in minute print on the back of her sixty-five-year-old Penguin book, I know next to nothing about Mr. Smith as yet.

  The Answers of Ernst von Salomon. A former Freikorps soldier whose approach to the 131 questions on his Fragebogen is close to complete anarchy. He survived the war, avoided conscription, avoided becoming a Nazi and left a memoir of untold riches for the delving historian. It was translated into English in 1954 and, as with Aftermath, I don’t think it ever had a second run.

  The treatise I ascribe to Peter Camenzind, Über den Nachweis . . ., in chapter 78 was written by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman and published in Naturwissenschaften in 1939. Almost needless to say I have not read it.

  There’s a mixed bag of fiction dealing with Germany after the war by both Germans and occupiers. If pressed to recommend just one—and no one is pressing—my choice would be Kay Boyle’s The Smoking Mountain (Knopf, 1950).