Leaving Berlin (34 page)

“I’ll say good night, then,” Saratov said.

The lights flickered again.

“Don’t worry,” Leon said to Irene as Saratov left.

“Worry?”

“Sometimes his manner—but it’s just his manner.” He paused, a quick side glance to Alex. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

“And you,” Irene said. “Is your wife in Moscow too?”

“In Perm,” he said, a knowing faint smile. “Even further away.”

Irene turned toward the stairs, not answering.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Alex said.

“The family friend,” Leon said, another smile.

Alex looked at him. Not here. Not tonight. “And what are you?” he said, then started for the stairs.

“My God,” Irene said on the landing. “I’m shaking.”

“No, you were perfect.”

“He kept looking at me, just to see how— But what does it mean? Why would he say that? Sasha in Moscow.”

“I’m not sure.”

“To see what I know, I think. If I’m surprised. If I’m not surprised. And either way he suspects.”

“Maybe. And maybe he wants you to think he doesn’t suspect. They’re walking away from it. So you don’t have to worry anymore.”

“And then put a rope around my neck.”

He took her elbow. “They don’t know he’s dead.”

“They must know something. Why would they make such a lie?”

“I don’t know. I have to think.”

“Oh, think. Look at me. Shaking. I really will be sick.”

“We’re almost there. Remember, go to the ladies’ room before the curtain. Establish it.”

“And he doesn’t even come to the play. So maybe he’s outside. Waiting to see who comes out. Who doesn’t believe him about Moscow.”

“
Shh.
Let’s find our seats. Check the sight lines.”

“The sight—?”

“Who can see us.”

They were in the first ring, three rows up, last seats on the aisle. Alex stood for a minute, trying to locate faces. The Russian, Leon, he spotted in the swarm of people below—a seat back in the orchestra, out of the way. But where was Markus, sharp-eyed Mielke? He turned his head slowly, scanning the mezzanine. Not up here. Beneath the overhang? Anna Seghers’s white hair, Dymshits still working the aisle below, greeting people, Ferber next to a group of Americans. But what about the people he didn’t know? Hundreds of eyes.

“Okay, go to the ladies’ room now.”

“I’m so nervous, it’s for real.”

He continued to stand, letting people get by him to their center seats, his eyes circling the theater. Markus and Mielke, there, in a box. Spotting him, nodding, but getting into chairs facing the stage—they’d have to swivel around to see him after the play started. Still looking for Markovsky, Karlshorst keeping things to themselves again, but neither of them aware there was a corpse in a drawer, fished out near Bellevue. Why say he was in Moscow? Maybe Irene was right—some trap, baiting them with surprise, just to see how they bit. Maybe Saratov, new to the job, wanted the whole thing off his desk, filed away. But the leak couldn’t be filed away, still talking in Wiesbaden, Saratov’s worst nightmare—a willing defector or a kidnapped one, did it matter? Someone who knew, who’d sat at the same desk. Unless—Alex stopped, looking straight out at the curtain, the noise rising up from the orchestra like heat. Unless they knew there was no defector, had never been. Unless they knew.

He stood for another minute, staring straight ahead, thinking, before he caught the movement, Elsbeth waving from below. Front orchestra with the—what were their names? Now pantomiming “Where’s Irene?” Alex signaling back, touching his stomach, then cocking his head toward the restrooms. Elsbeth nodded and excused herself, making her way up the crowded aisle. Not what he’d intended. Now she’d be concerned all evening, keeping them in sight. He looked again toward
Markus’s box. Leaning close to hear what Mielke had to say, but both facing forward. Dymshits taking his seat now. Where was Martin? Probably in the balcony. Ferber still with the Americans. Leon out of sight. He made another sweep of the first tier. No glasses looking away from the stage, no one facing backward. In the murmuring, expectant theater, no one seemed to be watching him.

Markovsky alive and well in Moscow. Some mischievous game, our phantom versus your phantom? We know. Not in Wiesbaden. But then where was he? Still somewhere in Berlin, waiting for Irene. Alex’s eye stopped on two Russians, sitting in a box opposite, staring across. But they could be looking at anybody. If they knew who he was, what he was going to do, they wouldn’t just watch, wait for an excuse. What would be the charge? Counterrevolutionary activities, like Aaron? Worse? In the end, did it matter? They took you to Sachsenhausen because they could. The charges came later.

“Herr Meier, what a nice surprise.” Herb Kleinbard, taking the seat behind him, out free, just as Markus had said. “It gives me the chance to thank you. For your help. Roberta told me—” He turned to her, bringing her into the conversation.

“No, I made inquiries, that’s all,” Alex said, dismissing it, aware that Roberta seemed somehow embarrassed, awkward in his presence, as if she now regretted drawing him into their lives. “Everything is all right now, I hope?”

“Yes. A bureaucratic mistake. But of course, a worry if one doesn’t know this,” he said, a nod to Roberta, explaining her.

“Yes,” she said simply, still in a kind of retreat. “Alex was very kind. A good neighbor.” Glancing at him, then looking away, uncomfortable, eager to move on. What had she told Herb? How desperate she had been? How Alex had helped?

“And neighbors tonight, I think,” Herb said. “You’re sitting there?”

“Yes. And here’s Irene. Roberta, you remember Frau Gerhardt?”

More awkwardness, Irene still a mystery to her, a woman with a car from Karlshorst.

“Feeling better?” Alex said. “She hasn’t been well today. I think only Brecht could bring her out.”

“A special occasion, yes,” Herb said. Then, to Alex, “Thank you again. You’re modest, but I know what it means. To help in such a situation. People don’t want to get involved, they don’t know it’s a mistake, they’re afraid. So I thank you.”

Alex received this with a nod. “But it was Roberta, really. She wouldn’t give up, and now here you are.”

“We should sit,” Roberta said. Not wanting to talk about it.

“Did they treat you—? I mean, you’re all right?”

“Yes. Such places, they’re not pleasant. Well, we know that. Not country clubs. But you know, you put it out of your mind. An evening like this, to see this in Berlin, you forget the bad times.”

Alex looked at him. “I was there. I never forgot.”

Herb met his eyes. “No, that’s right. You don’t forget.” No longer pretending, but still unsure what it meant, how he was going to live with it.

“Oh, they’re starting,” Roberta said, taking her seat as the theater went dark.

Irene leaned over to him as they sat down. “Now what?” she whispered. “They’re right behind us. People you know.”

Alex said nothing, trying to make out the stage in the still black air, even the tinkle of voices disappearing, a void.

“What can we do?” she said even fainter.

“We go ahead. We have to. I’ll tell you when. Watch the play.”

Suddenly, a flash of light, the stage flooded with it, stark, exposed, nothing shaded or softened. The Recruiting Officer and the Sergeant talking, a sharp tang in the language, Brecht’s German. An almost palpable pleasure went through the audience, street German, irreverent,
theirs.
Off he’s gone like a louse from a scratch. You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization.
And Ruth, as usual, was right: the stage was the Tiergarten, the street outside, the harsh bareness of it, another wasteland. The Thirty Years’ War. No props or scenery needed. The eye filled it with rubble and scorched trees. A faint harmonica, the canteen wagon rolling onto the stage, Eilif and Swiss Cheese pulling like oxen, up on the seat Mother Courage with dumb Kattrin, Helene Weigel calling out a good day, the voice perfect, a whole character in a line, and then the first song and Dymshits was right too, Dessau’s music gave Weigel her range, coarse and defiant, almost bawdy, the unselfconscious irony hinting at the horrors to come. Alex looked around. A magic in the theater, that moment of breathing together, seeing the extraordinary. And now happening here, with the rubble outside, Germany still alive, capable of art, a future.

Alex sat still, letting the language roll over him. Weigel fighting with Eilif now, drawing papers out of the helmet, omens of death. He shook his head. Pay attention to the audience, not the play. Over the railing, somewhere below, Elsbeth was watching a mother lose her children. Markus and Mielke, down right in a privileged box. How many in the audience were their informants, diligently filing reports? Maybe even on the play. Did any of them trust Brecht really, always slipping something by in a line?

He squinted, trying to see the faces, but the effect of the floodlit stage was to make the rest of the theater even darker. Unless you were in the first few rows, you were swallowed up in the shadows. These ring seats were even less visible. He could barely make out the audience, but they couldn’t see him at all. Unless they were sitting right behind him.

Onstage Mother Courage had lost Eilif and now was opening the second scene selling a capon, a long screech of German that Weigel massaged like an aria, reaching for notes. No one was looking anywhere else. As good a time as intermission, when people get lost in the crowd.

“Now,” he said faintly to Irene’s ear.

She started, as absorbed in the play as the rest of the audience, then nodded and moved her hands to her stomach, waiting a bit, then bending over, a soft grunt, almost inaudible. Alex put his arm around her shoulders, helping her out of her seat and starting up the stairs to the exit.

“We have to go,” he whispered to Roberta. “She’s not feeling well. Take our seats, they’re closer.” And not empty if anyone looked, one body as good as another in the dark. “Her time of the month. She’ll be all right tomorrow.”

Roberta seemed to shrink from this, embarrassed again, and just nodded, turning her head back toward the stage.

At the curtain covering the exit door Alex turned, trying to make out the Russians across. Had they noticed? He waited for a second to see if anyone had followed, some furtive movement, but all he could hear was Weigel arguing with the cook.

They went down the hall, no ushers, Alex’s arm still around her shoulder. The stairs would be trickier, visible to the concession sellers in the lobby. But everyone, it seemed, wanted to see the play, even standing in the back. They slid out the exit door, away from the waiting cars out front. A stagehand having a cigarette, shivering.

“Not feeling well,” Alex said, still whispering.

The stagehand just looked at them, indifferent.

They headed toward Luisenstrasse, the way to Irene’s flat, but then turned right at the corner instead, heading up to the Charité. If anyone was following, he’d have to turn too or risk losing them. They slowed, waiting a minute, but no one turned into the street. A car had come over the bridge and swept past without slowing. A man helping a woman get to the hospital, what you’d expect to see here.

“Where did he leave the key?”

“Under the fender,” Irene said. “It’s taped there.”

“Hell of a risk. Anybody could—”

“It’s DEFA’s car, he doesn’t care.”

The car was in the faculty lot, just in from the street, the key still in place. Irene put her hand on the door, then looked up.

“What if something—?”

Alex shook his head. “Ready?”

“If anything does, I’ll—”

He looked up, waiting.

“I’ll never forget you did this for him.”

Alex opened his door. “We’d better stick to the main roads. At least they’ll be cleared. It’s easy to get lost if they’re not—”

“Don’t worry. I know Berlin. That’s all I know, Berlin.”

He headed north toward Invalidenpark, away from the theater and any cars that might recognize them, then swung east to connect with Torstrasse.

“You never told me where he is.”

“Friedrichshain. By the park.”

“So far.”

“Not from me.”

“No, from the radio. In Schöneberg, no?”

“We’re not going to the radio. Not now, anyway.”

“But I thought—”

“That’s the choke point. The one place they don’t want him to go. They don’t want him to broadcast. So they’ll be waiting to stop him there. If they know.”

“But it’s how he pays.”

“He will. But not there.”

There was more traffic than he expected, Soviet trucks sputtering diesel and a few prewar cars, so it took a while to reach Prenzlauer Allee. He turned up, then drove between the cemeteries and across Greifswalder Strasse.

“I think we’re all right,” he said. “You see anything?”

“How would I know? They all look alike to me.”

“You’d notice if it’s the same one.”

To be safe, he detoured in a short loop, then came down Am Friedrichshain from the east.

“Press number five,” he said, idling the car at the green door.

But Erich was already there, waiting.

“Oh, so pale,” Irene said, a mother hen’s fluttering, as he got in the back. “You still have the fever?”

“It’s better,” Erich said. “Let’s go.”

“Duck a little,” Alex said, “so no one sees your head.”

“They’re following you?”

“Not yet.”

“I have a message for you. He said to tell you the refrigerator is still working.”

Alex smiled.

“Who said?” Irene asked.

“No one.” Alex looked at her. “No one.”

She said nothing, turning to the side window. “But he helps Erich,” she said finally. “How do you arrange these things?” Not really a question. She raised her voice, to the back. “You have your coat? It’s cold.”

“Yes, I’m warm enough. Don’t worry.”

“Enka’s,” she said vaguely. “I kept it. I didn’t want to sell it. For those prices. He always had good things, Enka.”

“It’s lucky for me you kept it,” Erich said.

“Yes,” Irene said, “At least we have the coats on our backs. Imagine if father knew this. Leaving Berlin with nothing. Just the coats on our backs. And a purse,” she said, raising it.