Leaving Berlin: A Novel

by Joseph Kanon

  “Oh, not with Markus?” she said, wistful.

  “Perhaps later. When you know each other better. When he has had time to prepare for you. If you both wish.”

  “Know each other? Who could know him better?” Then she caught Markus’s expression, someone watching a specimen, wary. “But perhaps later would be better, yes.”

  “Is she still—?” Markus started to ask the man, then caught himself. “I mean—”

  “A prisoner? No. Released,” his mother said, opening her hand, an odd flourish. “I have the papers.”

  “I am merely escorting her to you,” the man said. “To make sure she arrives safely. Comrade Engel’s sentence was commuted. In full.”

  “They gave me papers. So it must be. I don’t know why. I was an enemy of the people. And then I wasn’t. Like that. All these years an enemy.” She reached up again to his cheek. “While you were growing up. Your whole life. They took away your whole life. And then one day I’m on a train. It’s over.”

  “Comrade Engel—”

  “Oh yes, excuse me. I didn’t mean—” She pulled away from Markus, almost cowering. “Such talk. Pay no attention. I can’t think—” Fluttering, wings broken.

  “You were arrested for counterrevolutionary statements,” Markus said simply, a policeman’s voice. “This time away—to rehabilitate yourself—the Party must have felt—” He stopped, letting this trail off.

  Frau Engel looked at him, her eyes getting wider, something she hadn’t expected.

  “Yes, that’s right,” she said quietly. “To rehabilitate myself.”

  Alex watched the elevator doors close on the Polish woman. She hadn’t recognized him. A tweed coat. How many must there be in Berlin? Now Markus’s secretary was coming over.

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s Major Saratov. On the phone. I told him you were—” She blushed, a kind of apology.

  Markus glanced around the room, suddenly aware that everyone was still watching. “Mutti, I must work,” he said, almost relieved. “I’ll come see you later. We’ll talk then.”

  “Yes. Later.”

  “Alex will go with you,” he said, eyes brighter, pleased with himself, a way to ease Alex out too. “Get you settled. Isn’t it nice, his being here again? Like old times.”

  Frau Engel stared at him, not responding, as if he were speaking another language.

  “Alex, you’ll make sure everything’s all right?” Busy again, official.

  “I have a car downstairs,” the escort said.

  “Good,” Markus said, about to head to the waiting phone, then hesitated. A scene still public, not yet played out, people waiting for an embrace. He turned to his mother, at a loss, then put his hands on her arms. “Mutti,” he said. “You must be tired.”

  “Tired?”

  “Get some rest. I’ll come later.” And then his voice softened, private, someone else talking. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded.

  Another second, the crack in the ice growing wider, then he dropped his hands and started for the phone.

  Frau Engel insisted on taking the stairs.

  “It’s foolish, I know. But it reminds me, the lift. Closed up like that. You had to stand.”

  “In prison?”

  She nodded. “The isolation box. It was a punishment.”

  “For what?”

  She looked at him, surprised. “Nothing.”

  Two men in uniform overtook them on the landing, Frau Engel making herself flat against the wall to let them pass.

  “What is this place? They’re police?”

  “State Security. German.”

  “He works here? He’s one of them?” Her eyes large, apprehensive.

  Alex said nothing.

  “Markus,” she said to herself.

  On the street, she drew in some air, then shivered.

  “I’m always cold now.” In the winter light her face was ash gray, what Berlin had looked like that first morning, lifeless.

  “Where did they send you? Can I ask?”

  She shrugged. “A work camp. Near the nickel mines. Norilsk. Always cold. Well, so now that’s over.” She put her hand on his wrist. “What does he do for them? He’s one of them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “He doesn’t say. But he just got a promotion. He told me that,” he said. “So he can help you.”

  “Help me?”

  “Someone with influence. It’s useful.”

  “I was afraid. When I saw him, his uniform,” she said simply. “How is that? To be afraid of your own child? And did you see? He’s afraid of me. Some disease you can catch.” She touched her hand. “Contaminated.”

  “He was just surprised. In front of all the people. It’s a—shock. So many years. It’ll get better.”

  “But he’s one of them. Not just a guard. One of them,” she said, not looking at Alex, talking to herself. “How often I thought about this, what it would be like. Was he alive? What had they done with him? But I never thought this. That they would make him one of them.” She stared at the ground for a minute, then looked over to the car, the escort holding the door. “Well, my carriage. Cinderella, that’s what it felt like. I should have known. Are you all right, he asks. Can’t he see?” She touched her skin. “Why do you think they released me? He doesn’t see that. Only the old crime. What crime?” She looked up. “I forgot to ask you—your parents?”

  He shook his head.

  “No, of course not. Jews. And you came back.” Not a question, brooding. She looked around “And so did I. And now what? He’s one of them. And everybody else is dead. Kurt, my friend Irina, everybody. And what was it all for? You know, it was me. I wanted to go there, after Kurt was killed. Away from the Nazis, what was going to happen here. I was right about that. So I took him, Markus, I was the one. On the train. I told him how wonderful it was going to be.”

  * * *

  Martin had arranged a lecture for Alex at the university and a radio talk later in the month, but now needed him as a last-minute replacement for a broadcast with Brecht. Anna Seghers was in bed with flu. “You know how difficult it is to schedule Brecht. A casual conversation only. Your life in exile. Maybe even better this way. Comrade Seghers was never in America, only Mexico, and everyone wants to know what it’s like in America.”

  “And Bert is going to tell them.”

  Martin looked at him, caught off guard. “What do you mean? Oh, it’s a joke? Please. You know on the radio it’s important to be serious.”

  Brecht was serious enough for both of them: capitalism reduced everything, everybody, to the level of the marketplace, commodities for sale to the highest bidder, a system of inevitable debasement. “Life is not a transaction,” he said, and Alex smiled to himself. One of those Brechtian lines it paid not to look behind. He imagined listeners nodding, like the congressmen, pretending to follow Brecht’s testimony, befuddled but too cowed to try to pin him down. California, he said, had been the perfect example of this—hollow, a marketplace trading in souls. Didn’t Alex agree?

  Afterward they had a brandy at a local near the station, grimy, thick with smoke, Brecht’s element. Away from the microphone he became the private Bert again, familiar.

  “So now we’re part of the cultural offensive,” he said, underlining the words. “They always bring out the artists when they’re up to something. Look, German culture, back again. Still, it’s good for Courage. They want a cultural moment, and we open tomorrow. So the timing is there for us. Wait till you see Helene. We gave a closed performance last night for the workers from the Hennigsdorf steelworks. Not even the sound of a pin. Completely engaged. Steelworkers.”

  “What do you think they’re up to?” Alex said.

  Brecht drew on his stubby cigar. “You heard about Aaron?”

  Alex nodded.

  “It’s a good time to be quiet. Write a book. The country, maybe. Then, when it’s over, at least you have something.”
<
br />   “Unless you have a play to open.”

  “Well, me. I’m harmless.”

  “And Aaron?”

  Brecht looked away. “The Russians. This mania they have for housecleaning. Where does it come from? And the acolytes are even worse. Ulbricht. One word and he’s on his knees scrubbing.”

  “That’s what they’re doing, cleaning house?”

  “Think how useful. A good broom can sweep so much away. Old nuisances. People in the way. Someone maybe too ambitious. Pouf. Gone. And the Party is pure again. So now it’s the SED’s turn. Maybe a test of loyalty for them, see how high they can jump when Stalin claps. And they will. Our new German masters. I knew them in the old days, when they were altar boys. Grotewohl, Pieck, Honecker, well he really was a boy then. Now look.”

  “Altar boys.”

  Brecht nodded. “Now priests. You don’t see it? It’s not like before here—no more marketplace.”

  “Try in front of the Reichstag. Every morning.”

  Brecht dismissed this, waving his cigar. “It’s a church now. And what do priests do? Defend the faith. Root out sin. Never allow doubt. Once that begins, everything crumbles. You know, really it’s the same. I’ve been thinking about it. Maybe there’s a play. I knew these men. All early converts, young. Some go to the seminary. In Moscow. Now they never doubt. If they did, what would happen to them? How would they keep their power? Then the religion itself falls. Someone raises a hand, asks a question. Aaron, maybe,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. “He resigns. In protest. Protesting what? The religion? Maybe just the priests. But the questioning starts, who knows where it spreads? No religion can survive doubt. And, you know, they don’t doubt. Not the Ulbrichts. What else do they have now? They live for the church. Who can be as pure as they are? Who can ever be so guiltless?” He smiled, then pointed a finger up. “Except the infallible one. It’s all the same, isn’t it? Rome, Moscow. So, now a little Inquisition. And then it’s back to normal.”

  “But Aaron burns.”

  “Well, a metaphor—”

  “Not for him.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Help him.”

  Brecht looked at him through the smoke. “You know, it’s very difficult to do that. Sometimes you have to work with things as they are. Look at the church, the real one. All those crimes, so many years, and yet there’s the music. The art. We’re not priests, we’re artists. We accommodate, we survive.”

  “Ask the guy at the stake if the music was worth it.”

  Brecht shot him a glance. “It’s better than before. Don’t forget that. The Nazis were priests and capitalists. The worst of both. Gangsters. So it’s better.” He smiled. “Now just priests.”

  Alex sat back. “Accommodate. What happened to epic theater?”

  Brecht turned his palms up. “I said sometimes. Never here,” he said, tapping his temple. “You don’t accommodate there.” He looked at Alex. “And you? You’re here too. So a radio talk. A small price, no?” He finished the brandy.

  “You know he’s being charged with treason. He won’t just lose his Party card. It’ll mean prison.”

  Brecht said nothing, staring at the empty glass.

  “What if they ask you to testify against him?”

  “They won’t.” He shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. “Ulbricht wouldn’t allow it. He doesn’t trust me. He thinks I’m making jokes half the time. As if he would recognize a joke. So I’m a risk. Better to keep me as I am, a feather in his cap.”

  “Whose opinion would matter. In public.”

  “What are you suggesting? A letter to the editor? In Neues Deutschland? It’s begun. You remember the committee? In America? Once it started? There was nothing to do but get out of the way. Sidestep it, any way you could find. Then it goes on without you.” He poured out another glass. “And there’s the play to consider.”

  * * *

  He caught the Prenzlauer Allee tram, hoping to work on the lecture, but had only been home for a few minutes when the phone rang.

  “Alex? You’d still like a walk? What time is good for you?”

  Dieter’s voice, but gruff, pitched to anyone listening in, barely recognizable.

  “Anytime,” Alex said quickly. “I could leave now if you like.”

  “Excellent. Till I see you then.”

  He turned left at the water tower, then down the hill past the cemetery to Greifswalder Strasse. Dieter never called. Something wrong with Erich maybe, his fever back. He waited by Snow White, expecting to have his usual cigarette, but Dieter was there almost at once.

  “Erich’s all right?”

  “Fine. Something else came up.”

  “What?”

  “A body. In the Spree. Near Bellevue.”

  “The British sector,” Alex said automatically.

  “Yes. In a Russian uniform. My old friend Gunther wasn’t sure what to do. So he asked for advice. For once, some luck for us. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “They ID him?”

  Dieter shook his head. “No. But I did. He’d been in the water, but even so. Except it couldn’t be Markovsky, of course, because he’s in Wiesbaden. So I didn’t recognize him either.”

  “They call the Soviets?”

  “No. I told Gunther to put him in a drawer under a Max Mustermann until I could look into it. He doesn’t want to start trouble with the police here. Tell them you have a body, they start fighting over jurisdiction. Gunther thinks it’s his murder case. Coming up near Bellevue. I told him I’d help. We’re old colleagues.”

  “Murder case?”

  “His head’s bashed in. He didn’t slip on a rock. Now do you want to tell me what’s going on? He’s in two places how?”

  “He was never in Wiesbaden.”

  “Obviously. Not waterlogged like that. That was your idea?”

  “Who’s Max Mustermann?” Alex said, off the point, thinking.

  “What? What you call John Doe. No one. This was you, the defection?” he said again.

  Alex nodded.

  “So?”

  “When Markovsky went missing, they were all over Irene. Naturally. I thought this would give her a little space. Be the mistress he left behind. Not somebody hiding him.”

  “Was she hiding him?”

  “No. No idea what happened to him.” He looked at Dieter. “I believed her. But would the Russians?”

  “And now they do?”

  Alex shrugged. “They’re not grilling her. They’re too busy worrying about what he’s telling us. Our defector. Anybody disappears, it’s the first thing they suspect anyway. Another one to the West. So let them assume the worst—he knows their men in the field, all of it.”

  Dieter peered at him. “And when he did show up?”

  “He’d have to defect. Once he already had. Not exactly a forgiving group. Would they believe him? Would you take the chance? Then we’d have him for real.”

  Dieter said nothing, still staring. “And this was you?” He looked away. “Campbell knew?”

  “He had to. To set up the leak.”

  “But not me.”

  “It was safer.”

  “Mm. Except now he comes back as a corpse.”

  “No,” Alex said, looking steadily at him. “He’s still in Wiesbaden. Singing. As long as we want him to, as long as the Russians think we have him.”

  “And the body in the morgue?”

  “Another Max—what? Mustermann. How many are there in Berlin now? Bury him and who’s to know?”

  Dieter shook his head. “It’s murder. Gunther’s a little lazy, maybe, but he’s still a policeman.”

  “The Soviets aren’t going to come looking. They don’t even admit he went missing in the first place.”

  “He’s a policeman. He has to report it. A floater in a Russian uniform?”

  “Did you take it off?” Alex said suddenly. “I mean someone might recognize—”

  Dieter smiled a little. “The major’s st
ripes? We removed it, yes. It’s in an evidence bag. Gunther doesn’t know what he has yet. But eventually—”

  “Eventually you’ll tell him about the soldier the Soviets are looking for. Nobody special, just an Ivan who probably got rough with a whore, so her pimp— And he floats down to Gunther’s sector. But if he sends the body back, he’ll have the Russians on him. Another excuse to make trouble. They’re not going to miss him. Nobody’s going to miss him. Bury him. And we keep Wiesbaden going.”

  Dieter held his glance for a moment, then looked away. “You know, I’m a policeman too. A man’s killed, you want to know why. Who.”

  “Markovsky? Half of Berlin would have loved to take a crack at him.”

  “But only one did. You’re not interested to know?” He paused. “Or maybe you do.”

  “I don’t care,” Alex said easily. “They find a wallet on him?”

  “No.”

  “And he’s alone at night? Anybody. Does it matter?”

  “Gunther may not see it that way.”

  “Just for a while.”

  Dieter looked up.

  “Let Wiesbaden play itself out.”

  “You won’t be able to keep that up for long. The defector who isn’t there? It’s not a game, Herr Meier. Not that kind anyway.”

  Alex nodded. “Do what you can. We need to buy some time. If the Russians get Markovsky back now, they’ll haul Irene in for more questioning. Let me get her out first. With Erich.”

  “She’s going too?”

  “I think she should.”

  Dieter raised his eyebrows. “That puts you in a delicate situation. You’ll be losing your best source.”

  “She was finished anyway, the minute Markovsky got his marching orders. Saratov doesn’t sound like her type. Unless they pass their women on.”

  “No,” Dieter said, taking the cigarette Alex offered. “A pity.”

  “What? Saratov?”

  “No, Markovsky getting called home. And then this. Not a very noble end. Fished out of the Spree.”

  “What’s the saying? You get the death you deserve.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Dieter said, then looked back toward the street. “All right. I’ll talk to Gunther. When are you moving Erich? He’s a nice boy, by the way. We talked a little.”