Lehrter Station

by David Downing

  ‘I think you’ll find he was on something,’ Russell had told Dallin. ‘If you bother to look.’

  ‘On something,’ Dallin had echoed, as if Russell had chosen the wrong preposition.

  ‘Drugs. Uppers of some sort. Cocaine would be my guess. You can get it at any nightclub.’

  ‘We should close them all down.’

  Russell had let that pass – if Dallin had his way, he’d have razed what was left of the city. His hero was probably Tamerlane. He had never bothered with occupations.

  He smiled at the thought. At least Dallin had raised no objection to his trip. On the contrary, he had seemed only too pleased to have him out of the way.

  Russell wondered how the Americans would placate the Soviets. By giving them Halsey’s head on a plate, most likely. Metaphorically speaking. If the boy had parents they were in for a shock. Death and disgrace.

  He closed his eyes again, and let the throb of the engines lull him to sleep. He was only expecting a nap, but when he finally woke more Soviet fighters were riding shotgun on either side of the Dakota, patrolling the skies above their Austrian occupation zone.

  Half an hour later they were down, and taxiing to a halt outside the Schwechat Airport terminal building. Austria and Vienna, like Germany and Berlin, had been divided into four occupation zones, and Schwechat had fallen inside the capital’s British sector, but civilian planes of all four powers were using the runway and other facilities.

  The entry formalities were just that, and Russell’s progress was only halted by the lack of a taxi or bus. On Sundays, it seemed, arriving civilians were expected to walk the eight kilometres to the city centre, and it was more than an hour before he managed to cadge a lift in a British Army jeep.

  After a twenty-minute drive along mostly empty roads the driver dropped him off in the Stephansplatz, at the heart of the inner city. Russell had made several trips to Vienna in pre-Anschluss days, but the current city bore little resemblance to the one he remembered. Many of the hotels had been destroyed, and rooms were at a definite premium. It took him an hour to find one that was empty, and half an hour more to find one he could afford. This hotel was on Johannesgasse, and almost in one piece, the staircase climbing past a boarded-over rip in the wall, through which the cold wind literally whistled. His room was fine, apart from the lack of hot water.

  Feeling peckish, he went out looking for a café. Vienna’s centre looked in better shape than Berlin’s, but not by much. There were the same, precarious-looking, lattice-like facades, the same inner walls with their scorched decorations exposed to the world. Fewer of them, perhaps, but more than Russell had expected. Either the Austrians had been daft enough to put up a real fight or the Russians had just felt like breaking things. Or both.

  He eventually found a small bar. The interior reminded him of days gone by, but the same wasn’t true of the coffee. There was no heating, so at least the windows were clear of steam. He sat there for half an hour, watching well-wrapped people trudge past, all looking grim as the weather.

  As he walked back down Kärntner Strasse towards his hotel a jeep drove by in the opposite direction. It was flying the flags of the occupying powers, and carrying soldiers in all four uniforms. Russell had read about these international patrols in the English papers, and he wondered again how the French and Russians could bear it. A soldier’s life, as he knew from the trenches, was one long stream of banter, and here they were spending their days with no one they could talk to.

  * * *

  Waking alone on Monday morning, Effi had the momentary sensation of being back in the house on Bismarckstrasse, with the war still underway. The sense of relief when she realised it wasn’t caused her to laugh out loud.

  The Russians had announced the closure of the Babelsberg studios until Tuesday. The reason given was ‘refurbishment’, but what this amounted to was left unspecified – one joker among the prop boys had put his money on the installation of hidden microphones and cameras. Whatever the reason, Effi had the day off, and a chance to question the authorities about her flat on Carmerstrasse.

  She was relieved that Russell had left Berlin. The exodus to Palestine seemed a good story, and few things made him happier than gnawing at one of those. Rather more importantly, it put him – or so she hoped – beyond Geruschke’s reach. Russell might have presented the story of his abduction as a bad, semi-comic movie script, but she could tell how badly it had shaken him. And that had scared her. Losing him was not something she wanted to contemplate.

  And then there was Otto 3, who seemed, from the little that Wilhelm Isendahl had told them, like a father who might be worth finding. She might not like the consequences, but she had to put Rosa first.

  She was pleased that Hanna and Lotte wanted to come home, even though that meant that she and John would need to move out. The sooner normal life was resumed, the sooner Rosa could come home.

  Though of course it would be different for her. Rosa was Jewish – that was why Effi had needed to take her in. But what did that mean for the future? Sometimes the girl’s Jewishness seemed easy to ignore. Rosa had never mentioned, let alone requested, any sort of religious or cultural observance, and she had, on one or two occasions, displayed an unusually virulent atheism for a seven year-old. Though after what she and her family had been through, perhaps nothing should seem surprising.

  But still. Could she and John just ignore the girl’s background? Didn’t it help people to know where they came from? The girl’s life had been shaped by the catastrophe that the Nazis had inflicted on her people, and one day she would want to know why. If her father was found, he would raise her as a Jewish daughter.

  A second pang of prospective loss was enough to drive Effi from the bed. She threw on some winter clothes and went downstairs in search of breakfast. If they did bring Rosa back, she would have the highest-grade ration card, just like herself and John. The leading actor, the journalistspy, the ‘Victim of Fascism’ – Berlin’s privileged few.

  Half an hour later she was boarding a bus at the stop on Kronprinzenallee. Riding northward, she realised that her own doubts were gone – she wanted to stay. The filming was going well, and it felt wonderful, not just to be working again, but to be making a movie that mattered, one that might help her fellow Germans come to terms with what had happened. It felt like atonement of a sort, or the beginnings of such.

  And it was good to be around Thomas again, and Ali, and Annaliese.

  And John had to be here, at least until he found some way of disentangling himself from the Soviet embrace. Effi remembered him once saying that espionage was like quicksand – the more you struggled, the more you were trapped. But if anyone could wriggle his way free then he could.

  The previous evening she had talked to Thomas about the flat on Carmerstrasse, and he had suggested legal help – Berlin might be short of food and housing, but lawyers were springing up like weeds. Effi knew she couldn’t cast a family of refugees out onto the street, but that begged the question of who she would be willing to eject – whoever the current inhabitants were, they wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.

  She had hoped Thomas would know how the current system worked, but it seemed to vary from district to district. There had to be tens of thousands of people returning from war or exile, and only a few would be Jews. And, as Thomas had cheerfully reminded her, most of the city’s property deeds had fallen victim to explosions or fire. He had advised her to start at the local town hall and see what they had to say.

  She seemed to remember that their local Rathaus had been reduced to its constituent bricks, but, as she’d expected, enough of the front wall remained for a notice board bearing the new address.

  The new offices were a ten-minute walk away, in what had once been an elementary school, and probably would be again. There were about twenty people waiting in the old lobby, but none, as she soon discovered, were there to enquire about housing. She was directed down a long corridor, still lined, somewhat surprisingly,
with thematic maps of the vanished Reich, to the classroom now occupied by the Housing Office. This comprised an elderly man and woman, stationed at adjoining tables beyond several neat rows of abandoned desks.

  The man made a note of her name and the Carmerstrasse address, and began working his way through the twenty or so cardboard boxes which lined the wall behind him, occasionally pausing to stretch his back. After about five minutes he emitted a grunt of surprise, which Effi rightly assumed meant success.

  He brought several pieces of paper back to the table, and skimmed through them. ‘This flat was confiscated by the state on February 10th, 1942’, he told her. ‘Ownership was forfeited following the owner’s – your – arraignment for treason.’ He looked over his glasses at Effi with rather more interest than he’d initially shown.

  ‘Which means what?’ Effi asked him.

  He looked confused. ‘Which part don’t you understand?’

  ‘I understand all of it. Are you telling me that this ruling still holds?’

  ‘As of this moment, yes.’

  ‘Decisions of the Nazi courts are still valid?’

  ‘Most of them, yes. There has to be continuity.’

  Effi held on to her temper. ‘Are you telling me the apartment is no longer mine?’

  ‘No, not necessarily. But I’m afraid you cannot expect to simply resume possession.’

  But it’s mine, she felt like shouting.

  ‘You will have to apply for repossession,’ he said. He was, she realised, actually trying to help.

  ‘So I’ll need a lawyer.’

  He nodded. ‘I would certainly recommend it.’

  ‘Who’s living there now?’ she asked. ‘And how long have they been there?’ She would feel much better about ejecting a family who’d been gifted the apartment by the local Nazis than she would a group of refugees from the East.

  ‘The name of the current residents is Puttkammer,’ he read from his papers. ‘A woman and three children. They moved in earlier this year, in March.’

  Well at least they weren’t Jews, Effi thought. Not then, and not with a name like that. She asked for advice on how to proceed, and gratefully watched as he wrote out a simple list of steps she needed to take, and where she should go to take them. It sounded straightforward enough, though likely to take every hour God sent. It would all have to wait until filming was over.

  She thanked him and made her way back to the street. Schlüterstrasse and its cafeteria were only a short walk away, so she headed that way, hoping for lunch with Ellen Grynszpan. The former was available, the latter not, and after eating Effi started for home. But as she passed the remains of the Schmargendorf Rathaus on Hohenzollerndamm, it occurred to her that Zarah’s house might be standing empty.

  This time it was a woman she eventually spoke to. Effi explained the situation: that she was there on her sister’s behalf, that Zarah and her son Lothar were in London, and that her brother-in-law was probably dead.

  ‘Jens Biesinger?’ the woman asked, reaching for a file of papers.

  ‘Yes,’ Effi agreed, somewhat surprised.

  ‘What makes you think he’s dead?’

  ‘The last time Zarah saw him, he told her he had suicide pills for them both. That was in April, just before the Russians entered the city.’

  ‘And she wanted to live,’ the woman said drily. ‘Apparently he did too.’

  ‘You mean he’s still alive?’

  She was still looking at the file. ‘He is indeed. And would you believe it? – he’s working for us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘The District Administration. At the Housing Office.’

  Effi couldn’t believe it. ‘And where’s that?’

  ‘On Güntzelstrasse. It’s only a short walk away.’

  ‘So he’s still the legal owner of the house?’

  ‘According to this.’

  ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to go round there,’ Effi decided. She couldn’t honestly say she was eager to see Jens again, but he was Lothar’s father.

  She walked back outside, and asked a passing boy for directions. Ten minutes later she was outside a door signed ‘Jens Biesinger, Director’. Of what, it didn’t say.

  She knocked and a familiar voice said ‘Come in.’

  The expression on Jens’s face passed through astonishment and pleasure before settling on apprehension. ‘Effi!’ he said, scrambling out of his chair and advancing for a familial embrace.

  She allowed him one kiss on the cheek before shooing him back to his chair. He was wearing a remarkably shabby suit, a far cry from the Nazi uniform which Zarah had ironed about ten times a day. But he looked in better health than most Berliners, and several kilos fatter than when she’d last seen him four years before.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

  ‘I work here.’

  Why haven’t you been arrested, she wanted to ask.

  ‘Lothar, is he alive?’ There was a quiver in his voice, as if he feared the answer. ‘And Zarah, of course.’

  ‘They’re both in London.’

  ‘London!?’

  ‘It’s a long story. We’ve all been living there. John and I only came back last week.’

  ‘London,’ Jens repeated. ‘I spent months looking for them. I never dreamed… Are they coming back too?’

  ‘I expect so. Eventually.’

  ‘How is Lothar? Does he ask about me? And Zarah… why hasn’t she…?’

  ‘She assumed you were dead. Or in prison. We all did.’

  ‘Why would I be in prison?’

  ‘Your past allegiances,’ she suggested.

  He looked a trifle shamefaced, but the justification was clearly well-honed. ‘I was in the Party, true, but so were millions of others. I was a civil servant, after all, working for the state, so loyalty was expected. But we civil servants were not responsible for framing policies – we just did what we were told to do.’

  Effi shook her head in disbelief, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Will you give me their address in London?’

  ‘No, but I’ll give her yours. And I’m sure she will write to you, for Lothar’s sake. And I know he will.’

  ‘I’m still at the old house on Taunusstrasse. In the basement, that is – there are families on the other two floors. It is good to see you,’ he said, as if vaguely surprised by the fact.

  Effi smiled, and wished she could say the same. She told herself she was being mean. Lothar, at least, would he happy to hear that his father was alive. Not to mention free as a bird.

  * * *

  After finding and drinking a better than expected coffee in a café just off the Stephansplatz, Russell set off with his ancient Baedeker in search of the Rothschild Hospital. Beyond Vienna’s inner ring road the war damage was less extensive, and several streets seemed almost pristine. There was an obvious dearth of motor traffic – even the jeeps of the occupying forces seemed thin on the ground – and some vistas seemed more redolent of the Habsburg Empire than 1945.

  The pavements outside the Rothschild Hospital were crowded with Jews. They were not, as one told Russell, intent on getting in, but were waiting for friends or relatives who might soon arrive from the east. The hospital itself had suffered some damage, but most of it seemed in use. After queuing at one of several reception desks in the old emergency room he was given directions to the Haganah office.

  It was in the basement, at the other end of the long building. The corridors were jammed with people, and the rooms on either side offered a wonderful kaleidoscope of activities, from shoe repair through kindergarten lessons to full medical examinations. By the time Russell reached the Haganah office he felt as if he’d travelled through a small country.

  The office was not much larger than a cupboard, but its contents seemed admirably organised. The man squeezed behind the desk introduced himself as Yoshi Mizrachi. He was obviously not surprised by Russell’s appearance, which was something of a relief. He spoke English with a Lon
don accent, and opened proceedings by stressing the restrictions on Russell’s reporting – he must not mention real names, of either people or places, if such exposure might compromise the Aliyah Beth.

  Russell raised an eyebrow at the last phrase.

  ‘It is what we call this emigration. Aliyah has no direct English translation, but “moving to a better, or a higher, place” is as close as I can tell you. Beth means second – the first emigration is the one allowed by the British – only a few hundred per year.’

  Russell wrote it down. ‘No names,’ he agreed.

  Mizrachi passed a folded piece of paper across the desk. ‘This says that you are a journalist sympathetic to our cause, one that our people can trust. In some places you may be asked to produce it.’

  Russell assumed the writing was in Hebrew. He wasn’t so sure about the sympathy – Zionism seemed a pretty mixed bag when it came to rights and wrongs – but Mizrachi’s imprimatur could hardly hurt. The journalist inside him bristled a little at having to prove his trustworthiness. ‘Is this necessary?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘It might be. Forgive my bluntness, Mr Russell, but there are many Jews on this road who would be only too happy if they never saw a goy again, and they will treat you as an enemy. This letter will persuade at least some of them to give you the benefit of the doubt.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ Russell admitted. He asked Mizrachi what his official position was.

  ‘I don’t have one. I’m a sheliakh, an emissary. There are many of us in Europe now. In all the countries where Jews are living and travelling.’

  ‘Was it the Haganah who got it all started? The Aliyah Beth, I mean?’

  ‘Not in Europe, no. It was young men and women from Poland and Lithuania – partisan fighters, most of them. They began establishing routes before the war was even over. They sent the first people south to Romania and the Black Sea, and then others through Hungary and Yugoslavia. Once the war was over it became possible to move people westwards, into the American zones in Germany and Austria.’

  ‘How did the Haganah get involved?’