‘I won’t say a thing if you choose to have cake for lunch,’ Rod said, lighting a cigarette and blowing the smoke plume up into the awning. ‘The strudel is famously good here.’ He patted the middle-aged paunch under his shirt. ‘My daughter is constantly warning me against it.’
‘And how old is she, your daughter? Is she here in Berlin?’
‘No, no, she’s back home in New York, with my son and both my ex-wives.’ His face expressed not sadness, only something like resignation at the personal life of a veteran reporter. ‘She’s nineteen. In fact, she wants to become a journalist herself. She’s at college right now.’ His face couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.
‘And you’re not happy about that?’ Perhaps Rod sees me like so many others, Georgie mused, a woman abroad who’s not up to the job, and never will be.
‘Oh, it’s not that she’s female,’ he added swiftly. ‘More that she’s my daughter. I dare say your father might think the same?’
He was more than likely right. Georgie thought back to where she grew up – a small, provincial town in the Cotswolds, with her schoolteacher father and her housewife mother. Moving to London had seemed bad enough in their eyes but she wouldn’t easily forget the drained look on their faces after announcing her posting to Berlin, the worry she’d caused them. It was as much for them that she felt driven to prove herself now – to survive and succeed in unison.
‘I suppose,’ she said, swallowing back guilt with a spoonful of the strudel. He was right – it was divine, the pastry light and airy. Unlike the mood of Berlin.
They lingered for some time, and Georgie held fast to Rod’s conversation – he’d been in Berlin for ten years, on and off, and he was a fountain of knowledge on survival; time much better spent than watching Hitler’s young maidens practise their hula-hooping in the park.
Finally, one of the waiters approached them – tall, his dark hair slicked and with intense brown eyes. ‘Anything else, sir?’ he asked.
Rod barely looked up or acknowledged the man. ‘Ah, Karl, no thank you,’ he said in a low voice while looking aimlessly at the menu. ‘But my new friend here – Fraulein Young – might want something else.’
Georgie looked on, a little confused. She was full to the brim with strudel and coffee and couldn’t stomach another morsel. And yet the air between the two men, the tone, suggested it wasn’t the menu under discussion.
‘Not just for the minute,’ she said weakly. She looked directly at him, but he didn’t flinch. ‘Perhaps later.’
‘Very good, Fraulein,’ he said in a virtual monotone and glided away.
Georgie leaned into Rod with a spy-like whisper. ‘What just happened there?’
‘You’ve made your first underground contact,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Look around you. There are scores of Nazi, SS and Wehrmacht officers through here every day. It’s among their favourite female hunting grounds.’
Georgie scanned the Kranzler’s customers – clutches of grey and green uniforms were entertaining women at the tables, both inside and out, laughing, smoking and flirting.
‘Free with their Reichsmarks and conversation to impress the ladies,’ Rod went on. ‘And Karl has excellent hearing. If I were you, I’d become a regular here, once or twice a week, sit in the same place if you can, alone. If he likes the look of you Karl offers a little extra cream with your coffee.’ His eyes sparkled at the game.
‘Rod, how can I thank you?’
‘You don’t have to,’ he said jovially. ‘It amuses me to stick two fingers up to Hitler and his bully boys at every opportunity. Just use your contacts wisely.’
They ambled back along the Unter den Linden, the sun slicing between the sheer walls of the Baroque buildings. Georgie’s stomach was heavy with pastry and, despite the strong coffee, she felt weary. Still, she needed to justify her existence to her employers, to at least feed some copy back to her London editor. She followed as Rod ducked down a side street, guiding towards their offices, just a few streets apart.
They were a barely a few yards along when Georgie sensed a scuffle in a nearby alleyway, assuming at first it was a pair of scrapping cats. There was a yowl again – undoubtedly not feline. She slowed her step, peering into a narrow, gloomy gap between tall buildings. The moving forms were too big to be animals, and she could hear muffled voices, words barked with particular venom: ‘Kike! Dirty Jew!’
A dull shout followed, an unmistakable sound of someone – a person – in pain. At the hands of another. ‘No, no, I beg you,’ someone pleaded. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t …’ The voice trailed off to a thud, a shrill cry of pain. Power and pain inflicted.
‘Rod?’ she said. He stopped and turned, his jovial face immediately sad and dejected. He’d heard it too.
‘Leave it, Georgie,’ he said. ‘You can’t stop it.’
‘But, but … someone needs help,’ she urged.
‘There are thousands in this city who need help,’ he came back gravely. ‘You have to pick the battles you might win, and know when to walk on.’
She stood, utterly helpless, the sounds of violence ongoing. Painful to her ears. More so to its unfortunate recipient.
‘Georgie, please,’ Rod said. ‘Intervene and it’s your ticket back home, instantly. I promise you’ll do more good by staying.’
Her feet were lead, body pushing through a sludge of shame. But she did it. Georgie walked away, until the sounds receded to nothing, to be replaced by an uncomfortable clamouring in her ears.
No wonder they called it the snake pit.
In the Chronicle’s small office on nearby Taubenstrasse – empty as expected – she found a note from Paul Adamson: Gone to Munich for three days. Please attend to the diary. There was no indication whether it was for work or a last-gasp holiday before his impending fatherhood, and Georgie didn’t really care. She was quickly becoming resigned rather than angry about being left in the lurch. Suddenly Rod and the Adlon crowd seemed even more like family. She had to look on it positively: a chance to show her enterprise, and the London office she could do the job as well as anyone. But what did she have so far?
Georgie fed a sheet of paper into the typewriter, a shiny new Deutscher Mechaniker model, the Gothic type ‘DM’ embossed high on the roller, as if to purposely remind her she was within and overlooked by the Reich at all times. She glanced up at the window and caught the eye of a woman on the second floor of the building opposite, whose gaze cut away briskly. Her dark cap of hair seemed familiar. Had Georgie seen her at the Bristol, or Kranzler’s? No, stop being silly, she told herself. It was just a woman doing a job. Yet she couldn’t shake the sense of being watched; the implied threat of the airport guard and those two Stormtroopers with their menace.
She shook her head to rid herself of the feeling – come on, George, focus – pushing her fingers pointedly into the keypads.
Postcard from Berlin, Georgie typed at last. She had nothing of substance to report on – no news, but just before leaving England, she’d persuaded the Chronicle’s features editor to consider a piece from time to time. The paper often ran pull-out pieces – musings and opinion – from their correspondents. Weren’t her first impressions the best opportunity to offer a bird’s eye view? This was not the Berlin of 1936, all sparkly and on its best behaviour for foreign dignitaries and tourists, with the Nazi Party sporting the reasonable face of politics to pull Germany out of its lengthy economic slump. Now, even three days in, the air seemed grubbier, despite Berlin’s display of opulence. Already, it felt tainted.
Georgie had never been short of words – sometimes in her actions she was reticent, but always free on the keyboard; the blank page did not faze her. Finally, her fingers set to work.
Postcard from Berlin
Dear News Chronicle readers,
Recently, I became a foreigner in a strange and possibly alien land, a shiny city of old that is now entirely cloaked in the deep crimson standards of Herr Hitler’s Nazi Party – only a sea of military green and grey u
niforms dilutes the blood-red palette of the Führer’s future vision. In towns across England we are familiar with newspaper criers touting the news from their stands, but here Berliners stop randomly at lampposts, eyes on the metal speakers hoisted high, ears tuned to their tinny barking of rhetoric, inescapable to everyone’s consciousness. By comparison, Berlin’s citizens appear to gloss over the prejudice of park benches clearly marked ‘No Jews’, unashamedly stepping past – and stamping on – one person’s right to sit alongside another. The Third Reich, it seems, is everywhere. And no one is allowed to forget it.
Auf Wiedersehen
Georgie sat back and read the words. She looked up casually, and a shiver from nowhere zig-zagged up her spine and pricked painfully at the base of her neck – the woman’s gaze again from across the street. She wished the blinds were drawn, to blot out the eyes focused on her, and with an added paranoia, her page too. In a swift move, Georgie pulled out the sheet from the roller, scrunched it up and tossed it in the bin. Then, she plucked it back out, rifling through the desk drawers for some matches and setting light to the paper in an ashtray. As it crimped and burned to nothing, she positioned her back to the window, hiding the orange flame amid the darkened office that might act as a flare to unwelcome interest.
She sighed heavily. This was deep distrust, three days in.
Welcome to Berlin indeed.
7
Into the Fold
6th August 1938
There was no sign of Max at breakfast, and Georgie wondered if he had checked out of the Bristol and moved elsewhere. Fairly soon, she would have to do the same, and it was part of her day’s work to go searching for a bedsit. First, though, another trip to the Ministry of Propaganda, this time as an accredited reporter.
The Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda, to give its full and official title, was a sharp, square building just off the Wilhelmplatz, a short walk from Hitler’s seat of power, the Reich Chancellery. This time, Georgie passed with ease through the checkpoints and guards with rigid features, joining the thirty or so journalists who were seated in rows in a large room, in front of a slightly raised flooring and a lectern.
‘Morning,’ Rod mouthed, and motioned her to a seat next to him. Georgie found herself sandwiched between her new American friend and another familiar face from the Adlon, all red hair and spectacular moustache, who introduced himself with a brisk handshake as ‘Bill Porter, Chicago Herald Tribune, for my sins.’ In the opposite corner, Max was deep in conversation with a woman sitting alongside him.
‘Looks like we’re to be treated to the man himself today,’ Rod whispered over the expectant hum. Georgie’s pencil twitched with apprehension.
‘Oh, here we go, Joey boy’s approaching,’ hissed Bill Porter. ‘Ears on standby, everyone, for “limping Larry” himself.’ All eyes swivelled to the open door – the man who stepped through triggered an automatic hush.
It may not have been the Führer himself, but arguably the next in line when it came to wielding power within the Reich; Joseph Goebbels was no military man, had no army under his command, but the skill with which he twisted words and information – fed to the German people and seemingly ingested by the bucket-load – made him equally dangerous, and cemented his place among Hitler’s closest allies. His fashionable wife, Magda, was a darling of the society pages and regularly graced Die Dame magazine with her perfect crown of blonde hair and her tips on being the perfect mother to seven Aryan children. ‘Joey’ – as the press scathingly called him – possessed nothing like her charm or her looks. His loathing of the foreign press was also well documented.
He limped onto the plinth, wiry in his brown, fitted suit, with deeply sunken cheeks and ebony slicked-back hair, a creature halfway between a weasel and a shrew. His eyes were as black as his hair, darting around the room and settling momentarily on one body, before sliding to another. Despite his lack of allure, he held sway and power in his small frame, and Georgie hoped she wouldn’t fall under his gaze just yet. Perhaps ever.
Finally, Herr Goebbels coughed and drew himself up to full height, launching into his speech with few niceties – how the Nazi Government had reduced unemployment during its four years in office, helping good German families to flourish; a nation fervently committed to peace in Europe, proven by their signing of various non-aggression agreements with neighbouring states. The reporters scribbled furiously, though even as a newcomer Georgie doubted any one person present believed the truth of what this man spouted in his terse delivery. After all, wasn’t it the Ministry of Propaganda? And hadn’t Goebbels famously broadcast that good propaganda need not lie – it was only necessary to present the right idea in the appropriate way? So blatant and yet effective: coat the stark truth in a convincing way and the nation swallows it whole.
‘He doesn’t mention how they’ve massaged the unemployment figures by creating spurious labour programmes, or the families that are left out in the cold if they don’t join the party,’ Rod whispered.
‘Something of a magician with the truth then?’ Georgie murmured in response.
‘Catching on fast, kiddo.’
After a good twenty minutes of rapid-fire lecturing, and with no questions permitted, Doctor Goebbels – as he insisted on being addressed – picked up his notes and limped away. At his leaving, a hum of conversation sprung up.
‘Well, what are you going to make of that in print?’ Bill pitched to Rod. ‘I think my paper will have a good laugh if I file that verbatim.’
‘A little analysis and a good pinch of salt will be my approach,’ Rod said. He patted his stomach. ‘But first, some lunch.’
Georgie joined a portion of the press pack in a nearby café, where they chewed over the details and unpicked the truth behind the good Doctor Goebbels and his rhetoric. Why, when it seemed so transparent to everyone in the room, did the German people believe it?
‘Fear,’ said the Daily Express correspondent swiftly. ‘Maybe your average German doesn’t believe it, but they wouldn’t dare express it. Not even to their neighbours. It masquerades nicely as belief when you’ve got no one telling you you’re wrong.’
Still deep in thought, Georgie unlocked the door to the Chronicle office and noticed immediately the air seemed different, disturbed. Had someone been in, checking up on her? Paul was still away … Her heart jumped. Could it be that woman opposite? The ashtray was cleared of the burnt paper from the day before. The bin was also emptied, and the small toilet cabinet in the corner smelled fresher. Of course! The cleaner had been in – Georgie breathed hard at her own stupidity, imagining her nerves might give out long before the lead in her pencil. With the blinds drawn low, she crafted her report of the press conference several times, each version toning down a cynicism that crept towards sarcasm. It wouldn’t do for her first dispatch to be inflammatory, and she settled on a tone alluding to uncertainty instead.
It was only four p.m., and there were still two tasks to tackle before she rejoined the Adlon crowd, who had promised to introduce her to a new venue later that evening. She needed somewhere to live after her week’s grace at the Hotel Bristol was up, and a means of transport – the press gang suggested a driver was essential if she were to reach some of the events in the Berlin suburbs, especially if things were to flare up suddenly; likely an unofficial show of strength from the Reich’s Stormtroopers, usually with Jews or other ‘undesirables’ in their sights.
Rod had offered to pass on some names, but Georgie determined not to rely wholly on his generosity. She rifled through her dog-eared notebook, recalling the driver her paper had used during the Olympics. He’d been reliable and a mine of local information; it was a long shot, but he might still be in Berlin and available. The telephone number filed was out of order, so she wrote out a short note and ran to catch the last post. One job half done.
On the way back to the hotel, she bought a copy of the daily Berliner Tageblatt, and crawled over its pages in the lobby of the Bristol, her heart sinking as even the ren
t on small apartments seemed too expensive for her wage. She was resigned to settling on a room in a flat, though Georgie didn’t relish it. Would any German be willing to share with her? In their shoes, and with relations between Germany and the rest of Europe in sensitive limbo, a British newspaperwoman was far from an ideal tenant.
Deflated, she stood up and sighed. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed Max walking through the lobby, sure their eyes met for a split second – either they didn’t, or he pretended not to notice. Possibly because he was accompanied by the same dark-haired woman almost glued to him at the press conference. Was she a reporter? She didn’t look like one – too timid. And she seemed to be following in his wake, rather than alongside. Had he found himself a woman already? If their meeting at the Ritz was any indication, it wouldn’t be a surprise.
For a second, Georgie thought of saying hello, pushing herself in front of him to test his reactions, prod at him a little. Would he be embarrassed by his avoidance of her? But she thought better of it. After they each checked out of the Bristol, she and Max would see little of each other, perhaps only crossing paths at press conferences. Or she might simply read his reports in the Telegraph from time to time. That would suit her fine.
Stepping into La Taverne restaurant alongside Rod later that evening was a delight. It felt immediately like a homecoming to Georgie, a thin cigarette haze hovering at ceiling height instead of the swirling fog of a London pub. Some of the Adlon crowd had simply upped sticks and transported themselves into a much less salubrious, but essentially relaxed, venue, clustered around a large table in the corner of one room that led into two others, all three full of diners and a steady hubbub of conversation. The smell and the theme were unmistakably Italian and yet it was a very rounded, moustached man who greeted them – only in full lederhosen could he have looked more German.
‘Hallo, Herr Faber,’ he bellowed as they eased in around the table. ‘The usual?’
The Berlin Girl Page 5