Leaving Berlin (2 page)

“But in the book—”

“It’s meant to be any camp.”

“It’s nice, though, don’t you agree, to know what the author has in his mind, what he sees?”

“Well, Sachsenhausen then,” Alex said, tired of it. “The layout was described to me, so I knew what it was like. Then you invent.”

“ ’33,” Martin said, backing off. “When they rounded up the Communists. You were in the Party even then?”

“No, not then,” Alex said. “I just got caught in the net. If you were sympathetic. If you had Communist friends. They scooped up all the fish and you were caught. You didn’t need to have a card.”

“And now the Americans are doing it, putting Communists in jail. They said that’s why you left.” A question. “They’re trying to destroy the Party. Just like the Nazis.” The only way it made sense to the Kulturbund.

“They’re not sending people to Sachsenhausen,” Alex said evenly. “It’s not illegal to be a Communist.”

“But I thought—”

“They want you to tell them who the others are. Give them names. And if you don’t—then that’s illegal. So they catch you that way.”

“And then to jail,” Martin said, following the logic.

“Sometimes,” Alex said vaguely.

Or deportation, the Dutch passport of convenience that had once saved his life now something to use against him. “Might I remind you, you are a guest in this country?” The congressman with the
thick athlete’s neck, who probably thought exile a greater threat than prison. And let Alex slip away.

“So you came home to Germany,” Martin said, making a story.

“Yes, home,” Alex said, looking out the window again.

“So, that’s good,” Martin said, the story’s end.

There were city buildings now, the jagged graveyard streets of the newsreels, Friedrichshain probably, given the direction they were coming from. He tried to picture the map in his head—Grosse Frankfurter Strasse?—looking for some familiar landmark, but all he could see were faceless bombed-out buildings heaped with rubble. He thought of the women handing down pails of debris, hammering mortar off reusable bricks—and four years later the rubble was still here, mountains of it. How much had there been? Standing walls were pockmarked by shelling, marooned in empty spaces where buildings had collapsed, leaving gaps for the wind to rush through. The streets, at least, had been cleared but were still lined on either side with piles of bricks and smashed porcelain and twisted metal. Even the smell of bombing, the burned wood and the sour lime of broken cement, was still in the air. But maybe, like the airlift planes, you didn’t notice after a while.

“You still have family in Germany?” Martin was asking.

“No. No one,” Alex said. “They waited too long.” He turned to Martin, as if it needed to be explained. “My father had the Iron Cross. He thought it would protect him.”

But did he? Or was it simply a cover for a fatalism so knowing and desperate that it couldn’t be admitted? It was almost as if he had exhausted himself getting Alex out. How much had it cost? Enough to wipe out Fritz’s debts? More?

“You owe him your gratitude,” was all his father would say.

“You should come too,” Alex had said.

His father shook his head. “There’s no need. Not for me. I’m not the one they send to prison for having such friends. The Engel boy,
he was always trouble. Who does he think he is, Liebknecht? Times like these, you stay quiet.” He took Alex’s shoulder. “You’ll be back. This is Germany, you know, not some Slavic— So it passes and you’ll come back. Nothing is forever. Not the Nazis. Now don’t worry your mother.”

But it turned out the Nazis were forever, long enough anyway to turn his parents into ash, seeping into the soil somewhere in Poland.

“There’s Alexanderplatz up ahead,” Martin said.

The welcome lunch and bad roads had made the trip longer than they’d expected, and it was late now, their car lights stronger than the occasional streetlamp shining a pale cone on the rubble. On the side streets there were no lights at all. Alex leaned forward, peering, oddly excited now that they were really here. Berlin. He could make out the scaffolding of a building site and then, beyond a cleared, formless space, the dark hulk of the palace, singed with soot, the dome just a steel frame, but still standing, the last Hohenzollern. Across from it the cathedral was a blackened shell. Alex had expected the city center, the inevitable showcase, to be visibly recovering, but it was the same as Friedrichshain, more rubble, endless, the old Schinkel buildings gutted and sagging. Unter den Linden was dark, the lindens themselves scorched clumps. There was scarcely any traffic, just a few military cars driving slowly, as if they were patrolling the empty street. At Friedrichstrasse, no one was waiting to cross. A sign in Cyrillic pointed to the station. The city was as quiet as a village on some remote steppe. Berlin.

All the way in Martin had talked about the Adlon, where Alex was to stay until a flat could be arranged. It was for Martin a place of mythic glamour, of Weimar first nights, Lubitsch in a fur collar coat. “Brecht and Weigel are there too, you know.” Which seemed to confirm not only the hotel’s status, but Alex’s own. But now that they were almost there, with no lights visible up ahead, no awning or doormen whistling down taxis, he began to apologize.

“Of course it’s only the annex. You know the main building was burned. But very comfortable I’m told. And the dining room is almost like before.” He checked his watch. “It’s late, but I’m sure for you they would—”

“No, that’s all right. I just want to go to bed. It’s been—”

“Of course,” Martin said, but with such heavy disappointment that Alex realized he’d been hoping to join him for dinner, a meal off the ration book. Instead, he handed Alex an envelope. “Here are all the papers you’ll need. Identity card. Kulturbund membership—the food is excellent there, by the way. You understand, for members only.”

“No starving artists?”

A joke, but Martin looked at him blankly.

“No one starves here. Now tomorrow we have the reception for you. At the Kulturbund. Four o’clock. It’s not far, around the corner, so I will come for you at three thirty.”

“That’s all right. I can find—”

“It’s my pleasure,” Martin said. “Come.” Nodding to the driver to bring the suitcase.

The functioning part of the Adlon was in the back, at the end of a pathway through the gutted front. The staff greeted him with a stage formality, bowing, their uniforms and cutaways part of the surreal theatrical effect. Through a door he could see the starched linen on the dining tables. No one seemed to notice the charred timbers, the boarded windows.

“Alex?” A throaty woman’s voice. “My God, to see you here.”

He turned. “Ruth. I thought you’d gone to New York.” Not just gone to New York, been hospitalized there, the breakdown he’d heard about in whispers.

“Yes, but now here. Brecht needs me here, so I came.”

Martin lifted his head at this.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, introducing them. “Ruth Berlau, Martin—”

“Schramm. Martin Schramm.” He dipped his head.

“Ruth is Brecht’s assistant,” Alex said, smiling. “Right hand. Collaborator.” Mistress. He remembered the teary afternoons at Salka’s house on Mabery Road, worn down by a backstairs life.

“His secretary,” Ruth said to Martin, correcting Alex but flattered.

“I’m a great admirer of Herr Brecht’s work,” Martin said, almost clicking his heels, a courtier.

“So is he,” Ruth said, deadpan, so that Alex wasn’t sure he could laugh.

She seemed smaller, more fragile, as if the hospital had drawn some force out of her.

“You’re staying here?” he said.

“Yes, just down the hall. From Bert.”

Not mentioning Helene Weigel, his wife, down the hall with him, the geography of infidelity. He imagined the women passing in the lobby, eyeing each other, years of it now.

“Of course a smaller room. Not like the great artist’s.” An ironic smile, used to servants’ quarters. “They’re going to give him a theater, you know. Isn’t it wonderful? All his plays, whatever he decides. We’re doing
Mother Courage
first. At the Deutsches Theater. He was hoping for the Schiff, but not yet, maybe later. But the Deutsches is good, the acoustics—”

“Who’s playing Courage?”

“Helene,” she said simply. Now finally Brecht’s star as well as his wife. Alex thought of the wasted years of exile, keeping house for him, ignoring the mistress, an actress without her language. “You’ll have to come to the theater. She’ll be pleased to see you again. You know Schulberg is here?” Wanting to gossip, California in common. She jerked her head. “In the army. Over in the West. Which is lucky for us. Food packages from the PX—he’s very generous.” Alex felt Martin shift position, uncomfortable. “Not for Bert, of course. They give him anything he wants. But for the cast, always hungry. So Helene gets food for them. Imagine what they would say if they knew they were
flying in food for Weigel?” She looked up at him, as if the thought had jogged her memory. “So tell me, what happened with the committee? Did you testify?”

“No.”

“But there was a subpoena?” Asking something else.

Alex nodded.

“So,” she said, taking in the lobby, his presence explained. “Then you can’t go back.” Something else remembered, glancing behind him. “Marjorie’s not with you?”

Alex shook his head. “She’s getting a divorce.” He raised his hand. “We should have done it years ago.”

“But what happens to Peter? The way you are with him—”

“He’ll come visit,” Alex said, stopping her.

“But he stays with her,” she said, not letting go.

“Well, with the way things are—”

“You like a fugitive, you mean. That’s what they want—hound us all like fugitives. Only Bert was too clever for them. Did you see? No one understood anything he said. Dummkopfs. And what? They
thanked
him for his testimony. Only he could do that. Outfox them.”

“But he left anyway.” His bridges burning too. “So now we’re both here,” Alex said, looking at her.

“We’re so happy to have our writers back,” Martin said before she could answer. “A wonderful thing, yes? To be in your own country. Your own language. Think what that means for a writer.”

Ruth looked up at this, then retreated, like a timid animal poking its head through the bushes then skittering away, frightened by the scent in the air.

“Yes, and here I am talking and you want to go to your room.” She put her hand on Alex’s arm. “So come see us.” But who exactly? Brecht and Ruth or all three? A hopeless tangle. She smiled shyly. “He’s happy here, you know. The theater. A German audience. That’s everything for him.” Her eyes shining a little now, an acolyte’s pleasure.
The same look, oddly, he’d seen in Martin’s, both in thrall to some idea that seemed worth a sacrifice.

“I will,” he said, then noticed the overnight bag at her feet. “But you’re going away?”

“No, no, just to Leipzig. They want to put on
Galileo
. Bert doesn’t think they’re serious, but someone has to go. One day, two maybe. It’s all right, they keep my room for me here. You can’t make such arrangements by letter. You have to go.” So someone would.

The room, on the third floor, still had blackout curtains hanging heavily to the floor, and the bellboy, barely in his teens, made an elaborate show of drawing them, then demonstrating the light switches, the candle and matches, in case of power cuts. He nodded to the luggage rack with its single suitcase.

“Are you expecting more bags?”

“Not tonight. In a few days.” The rest of his life, sitting somewhere on a railway siding, waiting for the new flat to be ready. But why wasn’t it? It occurred to him, now that he’d seen the city, that flats must be prizes awarded by the Party. It wasn’t ready because someone was still in it, packing, being shuffled off somewhere else, the way Jews had been told to leave.

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” A bottle from the cellar, a girl, a bellboy’s usual late night services, but offered now without innuendo, vice out of style in the workers’ state, the boy himself too young to know the old code. Maybe one of the boys
defending the city with panzerfausts during the last days. Now waiting for a tip.

“Oh,” Alex said, picking up one of the envelopes from Martin, his walking-around money. He handed a note to the boy.

“Excuse me, perhaps you have Western currency?” Then, almost stammering, “I mean, you are coming from there.”

“Sorry. I came through Prague. No West marks. Just these.”

The boy looked at him. “Not marks. Do you have a dollar?”

Alex stopped, surprised. The contact line, sooner than he expected. Not even a day to settle in. The boy was still staring at him. Speaking code after all, a new vice, not too young for this. Or was Alex imagining it all?

He took out his wallet and handed the boy the folded dollar bill, watching as the boy looked at it, then handed it back.

“You are from Berlin? From before?”

Alex nodded.

“Naturally you would be interested to see your old home? A matter of curiosity. It’s often the first thing people want to do. Who’ve been away.”

“Lützowplatz,” Alex said, waiting.

Now the boy nodded. “In the West,” he said, already another city in his mind. “You can walk there. Through the park. In the morning.” Instructions. “Early. Before eight, if you would be up.”

“There’s no trouble crossing?”

The boy looked puzzled for a second. “Trouble? To walk in the Tiergarten?”

“At the sector crossing.”

The boy almost smiled. “It’s a street only. Sometimes they stop a car. To inspect for the black market. But not someone who walks in the park.” He paused. “Early,” he said again. “So, now good night.” He held out his hand. “Excuse me. The East marks? Since you don’t
have West?
Vielen Dank
,” he said, palming the note and backing toward the door, a practiced move, part of the Adlon touch. But did he have any idea what he’d done? Just delivering a message, pocketing a tip, no questions asked. Or something more, already part of it?

Alex took off his coat and lay on the bed, too tired to get undressed, staring at the dim chandelier overhead. They’d told him the most likely places for bugs were telephones and lighting fixtures. Had the chandelier been listening? He thought over everything the boy had said, how it would sound. But what could be more innocent than a walk in the park?