A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “You are an Opel man,” I said to Lars, remembering the Opel Olympia he drove during the 1936 Olympics.

  “I had little time to shop,” he said.

  “Every busy man’s curse.” I imagined him searching the streets late last night, looking for a convenient Opel to steal.

  “They’re reliable.” Lars pulled into traffic. The windshield wipers worked to keep up with the rain.

  “What did you do while I was gone?” I asked Anton.

  “We went shooting!” Anton’s eyes shone in the light from the streetlamps. “At the Wannsee shooting range.”

  “Did you, now?” I said, staring at Lars.

  “He’s quite a good shot,” Lars said. “We practiced with different pistols, and he was good with all of them.”

  “Lars gave me a gun.” Anton drew out a Luger. I had carried one around myself in 1934, and Boris had killed a woman with it in self-defense. She had stabbed me, and we were being shot at as well, but I knew Boris still regretted his actions. It was not easy to take a life, especially not in the days and years after.

  I took the pistol out of Anton’s hand. It smelled of gun oil. “You cleaned it, too?”

  “It’s part of owning a gun,” Anton explained.

  I turned the heavy weapon over in my hands. At thirteen, Anton was too young for it. Did Lars seek to buy his affection, or did he truly think Anton needed to be armed?

  “Lars,” I said, “we shall discuss this later.”

  “Don’t make him be in trouble,” Anton said. “I think it’s a very logical decision.”

  “I bet you do.” I stuck the gun in my satchel.

  “How was your meeting?” Lars kept his eyes on the road.

  “The Schmidt passports are stamped, but I could not get any new ones.” I knew I sounded defeated. Anton still had no papers, and how could I help Paul and Ruth?

  Lars briefly touched my shoulder. “Once we get the compartment built, that won’t be a problem.”

  “Can we go shooting again tomorrow?” Anton fidgeted on the seat. “I need all the practice I can get.”

  “I think we shall have to leave that up to your mother,” Lars said. “For now, where are we going?”

  “Take us to Paul’s,” I said.

  “This is a mistake, Spatz.” Lars stopped at a red traffic light. “Stay anywhere else, but not there.”

  “I need to check on him, Lars.” The streets were completely empty. It felt eerie, like wartime.

  “We should keep out of the Jewish quarter. We’ve been over this before. You cannot live with Paul there or you run the risk of being arrested for breaking the Nuremberg Laws.” Lars’s voice sounded like a lecture.

  I bristled. “Paul and I are not—”

  “You know better than to believe that the truth will save you. Or him.”

  I did. “I agreed to meet him tonight.” To find out what he had decided about Ruth.

  “I’ll go with you,” Lars said. “When you are done, we should spend the night elsewhere. I have a safe place where you and Anton can sleep. It’s not luxurious by any means, but it will do.”

  “How irresistible you make it sound.”

  He dropped his hand off the steering wheel onto my knee. “I could be irresistible, if you were so inclined.”

  I moved his hand. Lars drove to Paul’s apartment and parked out front. Anton jumped down first, still full of energy from his time at the shooting range.

  I stepped out and looked up at Paul’s dark bedroom window. Perhaps he was not home.

  A white light flashed from Paul’s kitchen. A gunshot broke the silence.

  17

  Anton took off at a run toward the front door.

  “Stop!” I yelled, already knowing that he would not.

  He was at the door first and streaked through before I made it to the stairs. I wished that I had not given him the key.

  Anton pounded up the inside stairs, with me close on his heels. Far behind us, Lars uttered a muffled curse.

  Paul’s front door stood open. Anton burst through and ran for the kitchen. I raced after him. Anton stopped in the living room, staring through the doorway.

  I stepped past him and into the kitchen. Paul sat on a dining room chair, head back. A splash of darkness marred the wall behind him.

  “Wait here,” I told Anton.

  He nodded, eyes on Paul. I put my hand on Anton’s head and turned it so that it faced away from Paul. He let me. His neck drooped forward. I held him in a hug. I should have protected him from this. I should have protected Paul.

  Lars appeared in the doorframe, gun drawn and held in front of him. “Touch nothing. If you listen to only one thing I say, let it be that.”

  “Yes, sir,” Anton said.

  Lars quickly surveyed the kitchen. “Stay here. Both of you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Anton repeated. Lars looked at me.

  “I am going to examine Paul,” I said. “I will not leave this room.”

  Lars nodded and walked down the hall, gun still out. Did he think someone else was in the apartment?

  I walked Anton a few paces into the room, still facing away from Paul’s body.

  I left him there and stepped past the chair where Paul and I had sat and talked only this morning. My shoe crunched on broken crockery. Someone had torn the tablecloth from the table and knocked the dishes to the floor.

  Unheeding, I walked through the mess to reach Paul. His elegant hands dangled over the chair’s arms, his head leaned back, his familiar brown eyes frozen wide in death.

  Far behind me, I heard Lars walk through the apartment, opening and closing doors, but it seemed as if he must be in another house. Here there was only Paul and me.

  I reached out and closed his eyes. His eyelids felt soft and warm under my fingertips. I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand. A long day’s-worth of stubble roughened it. I thought back to when I first met him, after the War. The hours we had spent as nurse and patient, the hours we had spent as young lovers planning a future together. Even after our affair ended, we had stayed friends for two decades. Grief clogged my throat. Tears blurred my eyes.

  Footsteps came into the room.

  “Steady, Anton,” Lars said. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

  Lars wrapped an arm around my shoulders, squeezed, and let go. I could not stop studying Paul’s face. Paul. Gone.

  Lars squatted and investigated the floor. Ever the clinical police officer. Or so I hoped. What if the scene triggered an episode in Lars? His right hand held his gun by his leg. I glanced back at Anton, still facing the wall.

  “Lars?” I had to keep myself under control, particularly if Lars could not.

  “Spatz.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “There’s no gun.”

  Paul’s hand hung over the side of the chair. No gun rested below it. He had not committed suicide. I took his left hand, running my fingertips along the bandage. His long legs angled off to the side as if he might stand up and walk away.

  Lars examined the bullet hole in Paul’s forehead and tilted his head forward to look at the back. He stepped to the broken kitchen window, careful to touch nothing. He nodded once, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and opened my satchel.

  “Lars?”

  He touched one finger to his lips, put his hand into my satchel, and took out the Luger I had confiscated from Anton in the lorry. He opened the handkerchief and wiped the gun down thoroughly. He curled Paul’s fingers around the stock. Then he dropped the Luger onto the floor. It landed with a clunk.

  “Please, Spatz,” Lars said quietly. “We must go.”

  “Good-bye,” I whispered to Paul. Lars put one arm around my waist and guided me away. I dropped my head and let him lead me.

  He stopped at the table and picked up the only thing on its surface—a sheet of paper. I stopped, too, head down. He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket.

  “Now,” he said, with new urgency. “We must go at once.”

  He shove
d us through the living room, gun drawn again.

  “Back door or front?” Lars muttered.

  “There’s a cellar,” Anton said. “Paul showed me. It has a door, too.”

  “Perfect,” Lars said. “Lead the way. No talking.”

  We stepped out of Paul’s apartment into the deserted hall. Lars wiped fingerprints off the handle and left the apartment door open, as we had found it.

  Anton stealthily led the way down the stairs, past the lobby door to the cellar.

  We walked between tall slatted compartments used by the apartment dwellers for extra storage. In the gloom, I recognized boxes, chairs, a tall lamp. One of these compartments stored Paul’s medals from the Great War and the typewriter he had lent me to type my first stories as a reporter.

  Anton scurried through the maze like a mouse, sure in his route. We kept close to him. Anton found the back door, and Miriam’s key opened it. We stepped into the cold night. Far above, hung stars that Paul would never see again.

  Lars herded us a few blocks before pushing us into a dark doorway.

  Sirens grew louder.

  He cursed. “Their response time is too quick. Something’s wrong.”

  “We need to keep moving,” I said.

  “I have to go back and get the lorry.” He fit his pistol into my palm. “This is a Vis. Polish. You have eight rounds.”

  I gripped the stock tightly, comforted by the heft of it, but worried about aiming it left-handed.

  “If I’m not back in five minutes, you’re on your own. Good luck.” He brushed my lips with his and stepped away.

  Anton and I huddled in the cold doorway behind a chained-up bicycle that leaned against the railing. Left there by someone who did not trust his neighbors. Probably right not to.

  With my right arm, I hugged Anton close. He shuddered, but fought down his tears. A brave boy.

  “Is it always like this?” he whispered.

  “What?” I whispered back.

  “When you come to Berlin?”

  I thought of my last visit, when my friend Peter Weill had died in my arms, or when I had stumbled on a dying man in my search for Anton in 1934. Corpses and grief littered my trips to Berlin. “Sometimes.”

  “I see why Boris doesn’t want you to go.”

  “Boris is a wise man.” Wise enough to leave me when he realized that I would not change.

  Sirens closed in. I longed to run, but I wanted to wait another minute for Lars.

  “I know why you go anyway,” Anton whispered.

  “Why?”

  “To see. To help. To do what’s right.”

  The Opel Blitz stopped in front of us.

  We ran to it and climbed through the passenger door. Lars held out his hand for the pistol. I gave it to him.

  “No one on the street,” Lars said. “I can’t tell if anyone’s in the other apartments, of course, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “Were the police there yet?”

  “Almost.” He pulled into the street and set out at a sedate pace. “But I think we got away clean.”

  “What’s next?” Anton asked.

  “I know a warehouse.” Lars sounded tired. “We can stay there nights, but we must be gone during the workday.”

  I hunched into my coat. Lars patted my knee.

  Anton huddled close to my side.

  I thought of the look of resignation on Paul’s face. His killer had not surprised him. He had expected to die. I shivered.

  Lars put his arm around me and drove one-handed. I remembered how difficult it had been for me to drive with only my left hand when I followed him in his car full of dead Gestapo agents. So much death.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I haven’t done much that’s useful,” he muttered through tight lips.

  “Yes, you have!” Anton objected. “You saved my mother from the Gestapo. And you’re helping us now.”

  “Thank you, Anton,” Lars said. “It is kind of you to say.”

  We drove away from the Jewish quarter in silence, through the still-teeming streets around Alexanderplatz, and over to the warehouse district by the river.

  “We’re here.” Lars stopped in front of a dark warehouse.

  I glanced nervously around the lot, but I saw only the silhouettes of weeds.

  “I’ll open the door. Wait here.” Lars left the lorry, and a blast of cold air entered.

  “What are we going to do?” Anton asked.

  “Lars is going to build a compartment into this lorry,” I told him. “In a few days, we will be home.”

  “What about Paul?”

  “He is dead,” I said. “We can do nothing for him now.”

  “We could find out who killed him,” he said.

  “So can the police, better than we.” I did not mention that Lars must have left his gun on the floor to make Paul’s death look like a suicide. The police were unlikely to investigate it further. In fact, even if it were ruled a murder, I doubted that they would trouble themselves over the death of another Jew.

  The door opened. Lars slid into the seat next to me. “Just a second now.”

  He drove into a mechanic’s bay and turned off the engine. Darkness cloaked the room, but I got a sense of tall ceilings and faraway walls. When Lars opened the car door, smells of grease, metal, and turpentine filled the cab. He squeezed my hand once, then was gone. Anton moved to follow.

  “Wait until he closes the door,” I said.

  Lars returned soon. “Door’s closed. You can get out now.”

  Lars led the way across the darkened room. I barked my shins on a heavy angular object. Other mysterious shapes looked equally menacing.

  Lars opened a door into an office, stretched his arm, lowered the blinds, and turned on the light. He looked pale but calm. Tears had left streaks on Anton’s dirty face. I did not want to think about how I must look.

  “Beds here.” Lars gestured to two automobile seats that had been removed and set on the concrete floor. “Washroom in the back.”

  His gloved finger pointed to a half-open door. Then he left.

  The office felt barely warmer than outside. I set Anton on the cleanest-looking car seat. “Tonight I think we skip washing up and tooth brushing and go straight to bed.”

  He craned his head to see a calendar with a girl in a red bathing suit hung on the wall. Even though it was November, the calendar read July. I shook my head. Obviously the calendar’s function was not to help them keep track of the date.

  I dug through the bag I had packed at Paul’s apartment days before. I had no blanket in there, but I drew out a nightshirt for Anton and folded it into a pillow so that his face would not come in contact with the seat’s cracked leather. I counted out headache tablets and dry-swallowed them without any belief that they would help.

  I opened the blinds a crack so that I could see the warehouse floor. No one there.

  Lars returned with a dark brown blanket that stank of beer and the gray one we had used at the park. “We can get better blankets tomorrow.”

  Anton took off his shoes and lay down on his side. I covered him with the gray blanket, tucking it around his legs, and spread his coat over him as well. I slipped my hand under the blanket and found his.

  He gripped mine tightly. “Aren’t you going to take the other seat?”

  “I think I may sit here until you fall asleep,” I said.

  Anton smiled. “That would be nice.”

  He closed his eyes, and I stroked his hair, as I used to when he was little.

  Through the glass I watched Lars. He took off Paul’s too-large shirt, folded it, and hung it over the steering wheel. I looked back to Paul’s shirt. It would be cold now without Lars’s warmth. Paul’s body would never warm it again.

  I closed my eyes. Memories of Paul in clean white shirts through the years streamed through my mind. Too painful to see. I opened my eyes and blinked away tears.

  Lars reached into the lorry for his overcoat. After he put it o
n, he drew the Vis from the pocket, checked it, and stuck it in his waistband. What kind of trouble did he expect here? I surveyed the empty-seeming warehouse again. Still no one.

  Anton’s grip on my hand loosened. He kicked once. I knew by the sound of his breathing that he slept. I watched him sleep for a full minute before going out to talk to Lars.

  He rummaged through a stack of metal scraps in the corner, holding an electric torch awkwardly in his left hand. Why did he not use his right?

  “Lars,” I called softly across the room. He did not act as if he heard me.

  I walked gingerly toward him. When I reached him, I tapped his shoulder. His right hand drew the gun from his waistband as he turned. Now I knew why he held the torch in his left.

  “Lars!” I lifted both hands to shoulder height. “Don’t shoot!”

  He lowered the barrel. “Apologies.”

  I put down my hands, shaking.

  He tucked the gun back into his waistband. “You startled me.”

  “I am sorry.” I pulled my coat close against the chill.

  “It has been a difficult evening.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it has.”

  He led me back to the lorry, set the gun on the dash, climbed in, and handed me up beside him. I glanced toward the office where Anton slept.

  “You should be working on the compartment,” I said.

  Lars tightened his lips. “I don’t have the materials I need here. I’ll make a list for my friend in the morning.”

  I wished that he could start sooner. But where would we find sheet metal in the middle of the night? Even Lars had limits.

  “I would have talked to him earlier today,” he said. “But I didn’t want to meet the other workers.”

  His caution was warranted. “So, you start tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow night,” he said. “I can’t work here during the day without raising questions. I don’t trust the men here.”

  “But you trust your friend?”

  “I do.” He removed a flat glass bottle from the glove box. He took a swig and handed it to me. I shifted it from the hand with a cast to my left hand and drank. Korn schnapps burned my throat.

  “Show me the paper,” I said.

  “What paper?” He took another drink.