“Ah yes, the Russians,” murmurs Hilton. “Ivan and that lot.”
It reassures him to hear that the spurned fiancé is at a safe distance.
“Right then,” he says, eager to wrap up the conversation. “All the best in Berlin, Crown!”
In the hotel lobby, Crown runs into John Clark. “No red bobble hat today?” asks Clark.
“No, not anymore,” replies Crown, and this time he beats his old friend to it: “Let’s go and have a drink!”
“One last one,” he adds.
Clark looks at his watch in surprise. “The last one? How many have you already had? It’s only midday.”
“The last one ever,” replies Crown, telling him the news.
“No way!” declares Clark. “Well then, first you need to say a proper goodbye to Hollywood.”
They race down Sunset Boulevard in Clark’s cabriolet together, back into the past.
“My name is Carl Liliencron,” says Clark, imitating the newcomer.
Crown retaliates with memories of his time as a guardian angel in the Banana House.
“Do you remember how we drove through Hercules’ handcuffs on Hollywood Boulevard?” asks Clark.
“Of course,” says Crown, “I’ll miss that in Berlin.”
“Good luck there!” laughs Clark.
“I’m wilder than the west, and that’s a fact!” cries Crown.
Such crazy years.
In the Formosa, they order a round of gin fizz. And another. And another. And another. And another.
The next day, when Carl Crown climbs into the airplane with his family, it is not just the flag of freedom waving, but the flag of the Formosa too.
*
In May, there are days when Berlin is already skipping ahead into summer, and it’s beautifully warm. Today is one of those days.
The sky shines its brightest blue, even though it is arched over a city that lies in ruins.
Sirius wanders through the streets, feeling hungry. It’s not easy to find something edible when all the humans’ stomachs are rumbling too. On every corner, there is someone stood exchanging something for something that can be eaten. Sirius watches as a packet of cigarettes and a stack of turnips change hands. A turnip, that would be just the ticket right now. His mouth waters. He pushes his way into the bartering process by sitting up and begging, and puts on his best irresistible expression.
“Get lost!” curses the man who has just taken ownership of the turnips. “I need these to feed my family. For an entire week.”
Sirius scarpers away. He makes his rounds for a while longer, then gives up. He lies down on a patch of grass which is catching the rays of sunshine.
“Do you have to lie right where I want to sweep?” scolds Frau Zinke. She brandishes her broom threateningly.
A Jeep with an American flag drives past. The hood is up and a large movie camera is jutting out of it.
“Stop!” calls the cameraman. He films Frau Zinke sweeping the ruins.
“A widow always sweeps twice,” laughs the director on the Jeep’s roof, shaking his head in disbelief.
Sirius can’t believe his eyes. He knows these men. The one behind the camera is Tyrone Chester. The other is the strange Austrian with the cocked hat, Billy Wilder.
Tyrone Chester sees the dog in the sunshine, framed by the ruins, and his foolproof sense for tear-jerking scenes tells him that this is a fantastic motif. It would be even more powerful, of course, if the dog were lying not on the grass, but on the rubble and ashes.
Sirius senses what is required of him, and positions himself poignantly on the rubble and ashes. He doesn’t want to seem like a know-it-all, but wouldn’t it be even more moving if he were to whimper softly too?
“Fantastic!” calls Chester. “He’s whimpering softly. That really tugs at the heartstrings.”
Then, all of a sudden, he frowns. “Just a minute,” he murmurs. “Isn’t that Hercules?”
“No, it’s Sirius,” corrects Frau Zinke.
“Exactly,” replies Chester. “Hercules!”
The dog waves his tail cheerfully and barks in greeting. He nestles up against the man who discovered him. Twice, one should say now. First in Hollywood, and now in Berlin.
“Hercules!” rejoices Chester. “Welcome back to Hollywood!”
Frau Zinke doesn’t understand the world anymore. “So now he has another new name,” she grumbles. “Today he’s called this, and the next day something else.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” giggles Billy Wilder.
Frau Zinke has had enough of the disruption. She needs to carry on sweeping.
“What are you doing here anyway?” she asks.
“Colonel Wilder,” says her conversation partner by way of introduction. “Officer of the U.S. Army, film department. We’ve been on location in Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald. Places that you probably don’t know anything about.”
“No,” Frau Zinke shakes her head.
“Then you are exactly our target group,” says Wilder. “The film is called Death Mills. In movie theatres from October. Definitely worth seeing.”
“I don’t have time,” says Frau Zinke, picking up her broom and disappearing down into her cellar.
Sirius shakes off the rubble and ash from his fur. Okay, so it was just a short scene, a minor role, but he did a great job. Not bad after his career setback. And now Hollywood is calling.
“Come with us!” calls Chester. “We’re flying back tonight. Jack Warner won’t believe his eyes: Hercules, the Return!”
Sirius hesitates. Here he stands, just a few steps away from the house where he lived before he had to take flight. How often has he longed to be back here? Wasn’t coming home the point of his long journey?
“Get in!” calls Billy Wilder. “What’s holding you back?”
He’s right, thinks Sirius. His home is now nothing but a pile of bricks. What’s left for him here?
“You’re unsure?” asks the tree.
“Yes,” admits Sirius.
“So I see,” says the tree. “You no longer know where home is.”
Sirius nods.
“I’m going to tell you something,” says the tree. “Home is the wherever your heart is.”
“My heart?” asks Sirius.
“Yes,” says the tree. “Where is your heart at home?”
“With the people I love,” says Sirius.
“So there you have it,” says the tree. “You have found your home, after all. Now your home just has to find you.”
“I don’t understand,” says Sirius.
“Just wait,” says the tree.
It’s strange how the tree always speaks in riddles, Sirius grumbles to himself. His head is spinning. But for some reason he feels cheerful, his gloomy mood has lifted. His heart suddenly leaps. And when your heart leaps, you have to follow it, he thinks, rushing off.
“Where are you going?” Billy Wilder calls after him. “Come with us!”
Sirius turns around briefly, shakes his head, wags his tail in farewell and barks his own version of Auf Wiedersehen.
Then he makes his way back to the patch of grass. The sun is no longer shining, but the grass is still warm. He stretches out and closes his eyes. Perhaps my home will find me here, he ponders.
Sirius decides to just wait.
*
Klamtstrasse is a desolate sight. The wind whistles through the hollow houses, sucking the ash from the ruins and spitting it out again in disgust, as though it were coughing.
The clouds of smoke gradually drift away to reveal some figures approaching in the distance. There are four… no, five of them. The smaller one seems to be a child.
Their footsteps are weary. They are lugging heavy suitcases. Every few metres they stop, look around them searchingly, point at this or that, and then venture forwards a little more. It is the Liliencron family.
They get closer and closer. The child runs ahead, stopping by each ruin and calling out: “Is this where we l
ive?”
The Liliencrons are coming back. The sight of the devastated city brings tears to their eyes. Only now, seeing their once familiar street in ruins, do they sense that this is not a homecoming in the truest sense of the word. It is a return to a place where their home no longer stands.
“Look, a man!” calls the little boy.
A man steps onto the street. He looks like a ghost. He was actually on his way to the black market at the Brandenburg Gate, to turn his watch into a shaving kit. Then his gaze falls on the new arrivals. He freezes in shock.
“Uncle Benno!” cry the Liliencrons in chorus, rushing to embrace him. Uncle Benno buries his face in his hands. He doesn’t know whether to cry with joy or laugh with despair.
“Welcome to Berlin!” he sobs.
He can’t bear to watch the family standing in front of their house, which used to be an elegant townhouse but is now just ash and rubble.
“Is this our new home?” asks the little boy.
“Yes,” says Rahel. “But we have to build it up again first.”
“Come on, Johnny, let’s make a start right away,” calls Else, as if it were a child’s game.
She takes a stone from the huge mountain of rubble, eyes it carefully from all angles, then puts on an expression of wonder: “I wonder where this one belongs?”
Johnny thinks carefully. “Up there, on the roof!” he decides. “Put it on the roof, Papa!”
Andreas feigns outrage: “You two can’t just take a stone from Uncle Benno’s stone collection like that. He went to a great effort to gather them all together. You’ll have to ask for his permission first.”
Uncle Benno frowns dramatically, as though he is struggling with his emotions on the matter, but eventually gives his approval.
Then Carl takes charge, and solemnly lays the stone on the ground.
“This is the foundation stone,” he says. “It is the symbol of our homecoming. The foundation for our future.”
They all stare at the stone, mesmerized.
“Now all that’s missing is Sirius,” sighs Rahel.
“Sirius!” calls Johnny. He yells, screams even, at the very top of his lungs, so loud that the dog could even hear his name if he were on the other side of the city. “Sirius!”
Frau Zinke comes out of her cellar, looking perturbed.
“What’s all this noise?” she mutters.
At the sight of the Liliencrons, something resembling shock flashes in her eyes. Or maybe it is shame. Or just conjunctivitis from all the sweeping.
She thinks hard for a moment, and then she remembers: “Liliencron! Professor Liliencron.”
“We’re looking for our dog,” says Liliencron.
Frau Zinke looks around, puzzled. “Strange,” she says, “he was here just yesterday.”
Professor Liliencron can’t believe his ears. Is he mistaken, or can he hear barking in the distance? Barking aimed at him? A sound so familiar that his heart contracts. No, he’s not mistaken.
There’s only one dog who barks like that, and his name is Sirius.
Good old Sirius. He thought long and hard about what the tree must have meant. Now your home just has to find you. And he has been barking ever since, without pause. After all, what else can he do to make sure that his home finds him?
He barks to the point of exhaustion, certain that, at some point, his home will come back and find him.
Suddenly he hears a voice calling his name. He gives a start and runs off. He runs as quickly as he can. The street is long, four legs are too few, and he wishes he could run even faster. “I’m coming!” he barks.
He runs past his tree.
“Sorry, but I don’t have time to chat,” he wheezes. “They’re here!”
“I know,” smiles the tree. “They’re waiting for you.”
Sirius is happy. He runs and runs until he falls into the outstretched arms of his family, crumpling in exhaustion.
His home has found him at last.
~
We hope you enjoyed this book.
For more information, click one of the links below:
Jonathan Crown
An invitation from the publisher
About Sirius
The spectacular story of a little dog who almost changed history.
Every morning at ten o’clock on the dot, Sirius, a fox terrier, takes his owner for a morning constitutional through the streets of Berlin. The pair stroll along Kurfürstendamm, visit the duck pond in Tiergarten and never fail to stop by the same tall plane tree for… well… doggy business.
Sirius wishes he could comfort his master. Hitler’s storm clouds are gathering, and it isn’t a good time to be a Jew. Or a dog for that matter. But, luckily for Sirius, destiny calls. Now he can step out of his dog basket and into history on his journey from family pet, to Hollywood legend, and the Führer’s lapdog.
Reviews
“Rarely a book is so intelligent, funny and cute at the same time.”
Kultur Spiegel
‘Successfully pulls off the high-wire act of giving the horror of the Nazi era a tragicomic turn.’
Kleine Zeitung
‘Perfect for those who like wit, heart and worldly wisdom.’
Bild
About Jonathan Crown
JONATHAN CROWN lives in Zurich and Berlin. He insists that his dog Alpha – Sirius’ grandson – told him this family history. All he had to do was write it down. He says: ‘This is the first novel by a dog, I hope it gives other pets the courage to raise their voices and rewrite world history.’
A Letter from the Publisher
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The story starts here.
Originally published in the German language as Sirius by Jonathan Crown. Copyright 2014, Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne/Germany (2013)
First published in the UK in 2015 by Head of Zeus Ltd.
Copyright © Jonathan Crown, 2014
Translation copyright © Jamie Searle Romanelli, 2015
Cover design © Pascal Blanchet
Author photo © Regina Schmeken
The moral right of Jonathan Crown to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB) 9781781857441
ISBN (XTPB) 9781781858134
ISBN (E) 9781781857434
Head of Zeus Ltd
Clerkenwell House
45-47 Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.headofzeus.com
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
Dedication
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
About Sirius
Reviews
About Jonathan Crown
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
han Crown, Sirius
Sirius Page 19