Leaving Berlin: A Novel

by Joseph Kanon

  “We’ll see for ourselves,” he said, moving into the hall.

  Fritz stood in front of him, a stage gesture. “How dare you? Make trouble in this house? At this time of year?” he said, taking in the tree. “Do you think you’re in some beer hall? One more step and I’ll get the police and then you’ll see where you are.”

  “Get out of the way,” the man said, pushing Fritz’s shoulder, his nerve back, the men now behind him.

  “Stop that,” Alex said, reaching for the man’s hand.

  The man swerved, shoving Alex instead. “Oh yes?” Another shove, toward the tree. “What about you? Were you at the meeting too? Maybe another Jew. You look—” Peering at him, nose wrinkled, so that for one stopped second Alex wondered if there really was some telltale Semitic scent.

  “That’s my son,” Fritz said. “Take your hands off him.” The voice icy, the authority of generations. Alex looked at him. No hesitation.

  The SA man stepped back. “If you’re hiding them—” He signaled for his men to fan out.

  “What makes you think you can do this? What right?”

  “What right?” the SA man repeated, jeering.

  “Effie, call the police,” Fritz said to another maid.

  “Call them,” the SA man said. “They’re looking too. Let them do the dirty work for once.”

  “Dirty work,” Fritz said. “That’s all you know. You and your—”

  “Here’s the water,” Ilse said, carrying in a pitcher, the old request.

  “Water?” the SA man said.

  Fritz looked at the rest of them, suddenly at a loss.

  “Thank you, Ilse,” Alex said, moving over to take the pitcher. “For the tree,” he said to the SA man. “They dry out and then there’s a danger of fire.” He knelt down and poured some water into the support stand. “It doesn’t take much,” he said, hoping it wouldn’t overflow, the basin already full. He glanced over toward the closet. Don’t even look, draw anyone’s attention. But then he saw the blood seeping out from under the door. Just a thin tickle but there, blood always jarring, something the eye went to, like a snake.

  He stood up and went to the other side of the tree, away from the closet. Sounds overhead now, doors being slammed.

  “So that’s what it is now?” Fritz said, no longer looking at the SA man. “You do whatever you want. In my house. My house.” The only way he understood it.

  The SA man ignored him, busy shouting to the men upstairs, then turned, his voice heavy with contempt. “A man who would hide Jews. Vermin.”

  “Nobody’s hiding anybody. You’re making a fool of yourself. Ah, now we’ll see.” The knocker rapped again. He went to the door. “Police. Now we’ll see. Come. Thank you. This gangster and his men broke in. You hear them? They’re all over the house.”

  But the policeman seemed more embarrassed than alarmed. “Well, Hans,” he said to the SA man. “What’s this?”

  “Communists. Two. Maybe more. They’re here—he’s hiding them. There’s nowhere else in the street.”

  “Hans, this is the von Bernuth house.” He turned to Fritz. “I’m sorry for this.”

  “I told him. No one’s here. And he comes right in—”

  “Call your men,” the policeman said quietly. “You have no business here.”

  A reluctant shout upstairs, Hans surly but not prepared to defy the police.

  “Oh.” Almost a gasp, involuntary. Ilse had spotted the blood. Still behind a wrapped present, out of the SA’s line of sight.

  Alex went over to her quickly, taking her elbow. “It’s okay,” he said, maneuvering her toward the sitting room. “Nerves,” he said to the policeman. “She’s easily upset.”

  “But—”

  “I know. But it’s all over. The police are here.”

  The SA men were clomping down the stairs.

  “Now look. Frightening the maids,” Fritz said. “I hope they keep you locked up.”

  “Get her out of here,” Alex said, handing Ilse to Irene, almost a whisper, then went back to stand by the closet, in front of the blood.

  “Is that everyone?” the policeman said, watching them file out, awkward and sheepish. “So. I’m sorry for your trouble. A misunderstanding. Now good night.”

  “But aren’t you going to arrest him?” Fritz said.

  “Arrest him?”

  “A man breaks into your house—”

  “Breaks in here?” He pointed to the door. “I don’t see any signs of that. You opened the door to him, yes?”

  “Do you think he was a guest? I’d have this rabble in my house?”

  “It was maybe too much enthusiasm,” the policeman said, “looking for Communists. Better, I think, to forget this evening. In the Christmas spirit.” He glanced again at the tree, then the present underneath. A few inches.

  “Yes,” Irene said, coming back. “Just go. Leave us, please.”

  Fritz said nothing for a minute, looking at the policeman, then turned away. “Rabble.”

  Outside Hans was back at the steps, one last threat. “We’ll watch. And when we get them, it won’t go so easy for you. You’ll see.”

  The policeman pushed him away from the door. “Shut up. Idiot. He’s von Bernuth.”

  Alex closed the door, bolting it, then waved to the maid. “The drapes. Every window.”

  The room itself seemed to exhale, everyone stuck in place for a moment, listening for sounds outside.

  Alex went over to Fritz. “Thank you. For saying that.”

  Fritz looked at him, a quick nod, then, confused by the intimacy, moved away. “Such things. In Germany.”

  “Oh God,” Irene said, suddenly frantic, moving the presents and opening the closet door. “Help me.”

  “Are they gone?” Erich said, nose still bleeding. He slid out, pulling Kurt with him. “Now do you see?” he said to Fritz.

  Fritz said nothing, his body slack.

  “Here, let me,” Irene said, moving into Erich’s place, cradling Kurt’s head in her lap. “Where’s the water?” Dabbing at his head with her handkerchief to stanch the blood around the cut.

  “Careful. You’ll get blood on your dress,” Elsbeth said.

  “Oh, my dress,” Irene said, dismissive.

  Alex helped Erich to his feet. “Are you all right? Is your nose broken?”

  “I don’t think so. How do you know? I mean, how does it—?”

  “Never mind that,” Irene said “This is going to need stitches. Ilse, call the doctor.”

  “Now?” Erich said. “You heard them. They’re watching the house.”

  “Get Lessing. Tell him to bring flowers. A Christmas call,” she said, but offhand, distracted, her eyes on Kurt.

  It was then that Alex finally took it in, her hand soothing the side of his face, her body draped over his. He felt a prickling on his skin, peeking through a crack at something he wasn’t meant to see. The way her hand moved, soft, familiar. He stood still, hearing the blood in his ears. How long? All the while? Erich’s friend. Always around. But when? Not the summer, the air thick with sex, no one but the two of them. That couldn’t have been a lie. But then when? She looked up suddenly, feeling his stare, caught, and he knew again. How long? Did they do the same things? At least she didn’t look away, pretend he hadn’t seen, didn’t know. It would be in his face. She held his look. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s not about you. Don’t look at me like that. It’s different. I couldn’t help it. You have no right—

  “I’ll get Lessing,” he said, breaking into her look, all the words, and then he turned to the door and it was over.

  Outside he had stood for a minute, expecting to see a waiting SA uniform come out of the shadows, but no one was there. The street had been as empty and quiet as it was now, and he wondered for a second if both of them, the memory and this gray morning, were part of the same Berlin dream. The people he’d just seen were dead, lost to the past. And in the half-light the grim street now seemed som
ething he’d imagined too. When he woke up, the hot Pacific sun would be burning off the morning fog and he’d be getting Peter ready for school, hurrying him for the bus, nursing a coffee.

  He turned back to Hausvogteiplatz. Except he was awake, here, and it had already started. “Just settle in and we’ll be in touch,” Campbell had said. Some vague timetable, a week or two, not the moment he got here, the first meeting already set. “You can walk there. Through the park. Early.” Why so soon? He looked up. No fog to burn off. As light as Berlin was going to get.

  * * *

  Just as the bellboy had said, he had no trouble at the sector boundary. A barrier had been set up for car inspections, but even those seemed random and listless. Pedestrians just walked across the street. The Tiergarten had been broken up into garden allotments and was still bare of the tall trees of his childhood, but at least the debris he’d seen in photographs—a downed plane, burned-out trucks—had been cleared away. Now what? There were two ways to Lützowplatz, zigzagging down past the embassy quarter or straight out to the Grosser Stern and then down. Did it matter? No one had said how the meeting would happen, maybe not until he was out of the park, so he just kept to the road. A few people in dingy overcoats had already begun to gather near the charred Reichstag to swap watches and heirlooms and PX tins, the new Wertheim’s. No birds, an eerie quiet.

  He was almost at the Victory Column when the car pulled up.

  “Meier? Get in.”

  An American voice. For a second Alex hesitated, not reaching for the door handle, as if there were still a choice.

  “Get in.” Boyish, no hat, short military hair.

  In the car, he offered his hand. “Willy Hauck. Nice to have you here.” Pronouncing Willy with a v.

  “You’re German?”

  “Not since I was a kid. Detroit. My father took a job there and never came back. I didn’t think I’d ever be back either, but here we are. Berliner Luft.” The German accented now with a lifetime of flat lake vowels, the voice crackling and on the run, like Lee Tracy’s.

  “You didn’t want to come?”

  He shrugged. “Things are happening here. So they move you up faster. They recruited me out of the army. G-2. They like it better if you went to Yale, but what the hell, I had the language, so off you go—beautiful Berlin.” He gestured toward the window. “That’s how most of us got here. If you can speak Kraut. Campbell’s got Polish too. His old man.”

  “Campbell?”

  “It used to be something else. Lots of z’s and who the hell knows. So. We haven’t got a lot of time. You want to be at Lützowplatz same time it would take to walk there.” They were driving out the other side of the circle, toward Charlottenburg. “Anybody behind you?”

  “I don’t think so. Why the big hurry? I didn’t expect you to—”

  “Something came up. So, let’s do exits first.”

  Alex looked at him, a question.

  “In case something goes wrong and you have to exit.”

  “Oh.”

  “Try to remember this, you can’t write it down, okay? BOB’s at twenty-one Föhrenweg, out in Dahlem.”

  “BOB?”

  “Berlin Operations Base. That’s your last resort. We have to assume it’s watched, so you turn up there you’re blown and all we can do is get you out of the country.”

  “Twenty-one Föhrenweg,” Alex said.

  “You know who used to live across the street? Max Schmeling.” Oddly proud of this, as if it meant something. “But like I say, that’s the fire exit. Otherwise, use the regular meetings if you need to get in touch.”

  “Which are?”

  “Depends where they set you up. Writers, people like that, they’ve been mostly putting in Prenzlauer Berg. Not a lot of bomb damage, so the buildings are in fairly good shape. So we’re assuming there. Close to Volkspark Friedrichshain, where you’ll like to walk.”

  “And bump into somebody?”

  “Near the fountains with the fairy tale characters. Know it?”

  Alex shook his head. “Never been there.”

  Hauck grinned. “A real West Ender, huh? Berlin stops at the Romanisches.”

  “We never had any reason to go there, that’s all.”

  “And now it’s home.”

  “I go every day?”

  “When you can. We’ll set up a time. It would make more sense with a dog, but with the rationing— But you still like to get out, get some exercise, clear the cobwebs.”

  “I do, actually.”

  “See? So you establish a routine. If they put you further out, we’ll have to change the place. Weissensee, you walk the lake. But that’s bigger houses. They keep those for the elite.”

  “Not the help.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. The Party elite. Officials. Don’t worry, they like writers. You’re at the Adlon, right?”

  “In the lap of luxury.”

  Willy looked at him from the side. “They’ll want you to do things. Public appearances. They had Anna Seghers at a factory. Cutting a ribbon. Major Dymshits loves writers.”

  “Who?”

  “I thought they briefed you. Chief Cultural Officer. Or whatever the title is. Anyway, he calls the shots for the Soviets. He’s a big fan of yours. He’s the one told them to make the offer. To bring you over. He loves German writers.”

  Alex gazed out the window, blocks of ruins, as bad as in the East.

  “What am I supposed to find out about him? Whether he reads Thomas Mann?”

  Willy turned. “What are you asking?”

  “I don’t know. Cultural Officer. Why? How is that useful?”

  “Let me explain something to you. We got a couple of wars going on here right now. Not just the airlift. Dymshits runs the propaganda one and he’s doing all right. The Soviets think they’ve got the moral high ground. Don’t ask me how. They come in here and rape everything in sight and they’re supposed to be the heroes. The first victims. The ones the Nazis hated before they hated anybody else. But they won. Not us, them. We’re just passing out candy bars in France. And now we’re the ones getting into bed with old Nazis. On the radio anyway. And anywhere else they can twist a knife in. Old Nazis—is that the future you want? Or the Soviet model? A fresh Socialist start. Of course the Soviets used the Nazis too—who the fuck else was there?—but somehow that never comes out, just ours.”

  “That’s what you want me to do? Find out if they’ve got Nazis in the Kulturbund?”

  “Sure. If they do,” Willy said, looking away.

  “What else?”

  “What did Campbell tell you?”

  “Whatever I could pick up. I still don’t see the point, but never mind. I’m here.”

  Willy headed the car back toward the Tiergarten, then slowed to a stop, idling by the curb.

  “Look, Campbell told me about it. Those fucks on the committee. Reds under every bed. If they knew what the Soviets were really up to— So we got you by the short and curlies. Sometimes that’s the way it happens. But, like you say, you’re here. You’re going to meet a lot of people. I want to know who might be—open to a little business.”

  “This business.”

  Willy nodded. “Maybe the future doesn’t look as bright as it used to. Maybe somebody’s beginning to wonder, maybe he needs a little money. I want to know. That’s the point.”

  “All right,” Alex said quietly.

  “Next, don’t get yourself killed.”

  Alex looked at him. “I thought I was just collecting a little gossip.”

  “The Russians don’t see it that way. It’s Dodge City here. You want to watch your back. Everywhere. The sectors don’t mean anything. They think it’s all theirs. People disappear—broad daylight, they just grab them—and we complain and they say they don’t know what we’re talking about. People get killed too. It’s a dangerous place for amateurs. I didn’t ask for this, you know? Civilian, first time out. But Campbell said you’d be okay. Said you were motivated.” Holding onto the
word.

  “That’s one way of putting it. If you’re a shit like Campbell.”

  Willy leaned back, surprised, then smiled. “Yeah. Well. It’s a shitty business.”

  Alex looked over. “What else? You didn’t get me out my first morning to tell me to keep my ears open. Something came up, you said.”

  Willy stared back for a second. “Good. You listen. That’s something you can’t—”

  “What came up?”

  “Pay dirt. For you. You’ve been promoted.”

  “To what?”

  “You’re a protected source now. Not just an information source.”

  “Protected.”

  “It means nobody at BOB knows about you.”

  “Except you.”

  “Except me. So there’s less risk if there’s a leak. BOB knows I’ve got a protected source in the East, but not who.”

  “Why?”

  “Remember you asked us to run a trace on some friends of yours?”

  “And nothing came up.”

  “That’s because they got married. New names. Then one of them popped up in a CROWCASS file, with a cross-ref to the maiden name. Elsbeth von Bernuth. Now Frau Mutter. Frau Doctor Mutter.”

  “Why was she in a CROWCASS file?”

  “He was. Doctor in the Wehrmacht. That automatically gets you a file.”

  “What’s he supposed to have done?”

  “Nothing. For the Wehrmacht. Just patch up the troops, what you’d expect. Before the Wehrmacht’s a little different. He was knocking off people in mental homes. The euthanasia program, to keep the Aryan bloodlines pure. No more cripples or idiots. Just the ones in brown shirts.”

  “He was tried for this?”

  “No. If we put every Nazi doctor on trial— Eugenics was a big deal here. Lots of doctors signed on. Not nice, bumping people off, but all legal. Anyway, that was before. CROWCASS was only interested in war crimes and there they came up empty.”

  “She’s alive?”

  Willy nodded. “Both. In the British sector. Practicing.”

  “And you want me to contact her?”

  “That’s up to you. Campbell said you were kissing cousins.”

  “My aunt married her uncle,” Alex said, distracted. How had he done it? Injections? A pill before bedtime? Gas? Purifying the race. Had Elsbeth known? Or just waited at home, pretending not to. In exile you imagine people as you left them, not what they become. What had it been like here, day to day?