The Good German (2 page)

“They say the eyes were hypnotic,” Liz said.

“I don’t know. I never got that close,” Jake said, shutting his own, making the rest of the plane go away.

Not long now. He’d go to Pariserstrasse first. He saw the door, the heavy sandstone caryatids holding up the balcony over the entrance. What would she say? Four years. But maybe she’d moved. No, she’d be there. A few more hours. A drink at the café down the street in Olivaerplatz, catching up, years of stories. Unless they stayed in.

“Pleasant dreams?” Liz said, and he realized he was smiling, already there. Berlin. Not long now.

“We’re coming in,” Brian said, his face at the little window. “God. Come have a look.”

Jake opened his eyes and jumped up, a kid. They crowded around the window, the congressman at their side.

“My god,” Brian said again, almost in a hush, silenced by the view. “Bloody Carthage.”

Jake looked down at the ground, his stomach suddenly dropping, all his excitement draining away like blood. Why hadn’t anyone told him? He had seen bombed cities before—on the ground in London, ripped-up terrace houses and streets of glass, then Cologne and Frankfurt from the air, with their deep craters and damaged churches—but nothing on this scale. Carthage, a destruction out of the ancient world. Below them there seemed to be no movement. Shells of houses, empty as ransacked tombs, miles and miles of them, whole pulverized stretches where there were not even walls. They had come in from the west, over the lakes, so he knew it must be Lichterfelde, then Steglitz, the approach to Tempelhof, but landmarks had disappeared under shifting dunes of rubble. As they dropped lower, scattered buildings took shape, smashed but there, a few chimneys sticking up, even a steeple. Some kind of life must still be going on. A beige cloud hung over everything— not smoke, a thick haze of soot and plaster dust, as if the houses could not quite bring themselves to leave. But Berlin was gone. The Big Three were coming to divide up ruins.

“Well, they got what they deserved,” the congressman said suddenly, a jarring American voice. Jake looked at him. A politician at a wake. “Didn’t they?” he said, a little defiantly.

Brian turned slowly from the window, his eyes filled with scorn. “Boyo, we all get what we deserve. In the end.”

Tempelhof was a mess around the edges, but the field had been cleared and the terminal itself was still there. After the tomb city they’d seen from the air, the airport seemed dizzy with life, swarming with uniformed ground crews and greeters. A young lieutenant, full of hair and chewing gum, was waiting at the foot of the stairs, picking out faces as they disembarked. The sick soldier had staggered down first, running off, Jake guessed, for the men’s room.

“Geismar?” The lieutenant stuck out his hand. “Ron Erlich, press office. I’ve got you and Miss Yeager. She on board?”

Jake nodded. “With these,” he said, indicating the cases he’d been lugging off the plane. “Want to give me a hand?”

‘What’s she got in there, her trousseau?“

‘Equipment,“ Liz said behind him. ”You going to make cracks or give the man a hand?“

Ron took in the uniform, with its unexpected curves, and smiled. “Yes, sir,” he said, giving a mock salute, then picked up the cases in one easy movement, impressing a date. “This way.” He led them toward the building. “Colonel Howley sends his regards,” he said to Liz. “Says he remembers you from his days in the ad business.”

Liz grinned. “Don’t worry. I’ll take his picture.”

Ron grinned back. “You remember him too, I guess.”

“Vividly. Hey, careful with that. Lenses.”

They went up the gate stairs behind the congressman, who seemed to have acquired an entourage, and into the waiting hall, the same tawny marble walls and soaring space as before, when flying had been a romance. People had come to the restaurant here, just to watch the planes. Jake hurried to keep up. Ron moved the way he talked, breezing a path through the gangs of waiting servicemen.

“You missed the president,” he said. “Went into town after lunch. Had the whole Second Armored lined up on the Avus. Quite a picture. Sorry your plane was so late, that’s probably it for town shots.”

“Wasn’t he at the conference?” Liz said.

“Hasn’t started yet. Uncle Joe’s late. They say he has a cold.”

“A cold?” Jake said.

“Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Truman’s pissed, I hear.” He glanced at Jake. “That’s off the record, by the way.”

“What’s on?”

“Not much. I’ve got some handouts for you, but you’ll probably throw them away. Everybody else does. There’s nothing to say till they sit down, anyway. We have a briefing schedule set up at the press camp.”

“Which is where?”

“Down the road from MG headquarters. Argentinischeallee,” he said, rolling it out, a joke name.

“Out in Dahlem?” Jake said, placing it.

“Everything’s out in Dahlem.”

“Why not somewhere nearer the center?”

Ron looked at him. “There is no center.”

They were climbing the big flight of stairs to the main entrance doors.

“As I say, the camp’s right by MG headquarters, so that’s easy. Your billet too. We found a nice place for you,” he said to Liz, almost courtly. “Photo schedule’s different, but at least you’ll get out there. Potsdam, I mean.”

“But not press?” Jake said.

Ron shook his head. “They want a closed session. No press. I’m telling you this now so I don’t have to hear you squawk later, like the rest of them. I don’t make the rules, so if you want to complain, go right over my head, I don’t care. We’ll do the best we can at the camp. Everything you need. You can send from there, but your stuff goes through me, you might as well know.”

Take looked at him, forced to smile. A new Nanny Wendt, this time with gum and get-up-and-go.

“Whatever happened to freedom of the press?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get plenty of copy. We’ll have a briefing after every session. Besides, everybody talks.”

“And what do we do between briefings?”

“Drink, mostly. At least that’s what they’ve been doing.” He turned to Jake. “It’s not as if Stalin gives interviews, you know. Here we go,” he said, swinging through the doors. “I’ll get you out to your billet. You probably want to clean up.”

“Hot water?” Liz said.

“Sure. All the comforts of home.”

In the driveway the congressman was being bundled into a requisitioned Horch with an American flag painted on the side, the others into open jeeps. Beyond them, at the end of the drive, were the first houses, not one of them intact. Jake stared, everything emptying out again. Not an aerial glimpse anymore; worse. A few standing walls, pitted by artillery shells. Mounds of debris, broken concrete and plumbing fixtures. One building had been sliced through, a strip of wallpaper hanging off an exposed room, scorch marks around the window holes. How would he ever find her in this? The same dust he’d seen from the plane, suspended in the air, making the afternoon light dull. And now the smell, sour wet masonry and open earth, like a raw building site, and something else, which he assumed was bodies, still lying somewhere under the rubble.

“Welcome to Berlin,” Ron said.

“Is it all like this?” Liz said quietly.

“Most of it. If the roofs gone, it was bombs. Otherwise, the Russians. They say the shelling was worse. Just blew it all to hell.” He threw the bags into the jeep. “Hop in.”

“You two go on ahead,” Jake said, still looking at the street. “Something I want to do first.”

“Hop in,” Ron said, an order. “What do you think you’re going to do, get a taxi?”

Liz looked at Jake’s face, then turned to Ron and smiled. “What’s the rush? Take him where he wants to go. You can give me a tour on the way.” She patted the camera slung around her neck, then put it up to her eye, crouching down. “Smile.” She snapped his picture, busy Tempelhof behind.

Ron glanced at his watch, pretending not to pose. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“A little tour,” Liz said, wheedling, snapping a few more. “Isn’t that part of the service?”

He sighed. “I suppose you want to see the bunker. Everyone wants to see the bunker, and there’s nothing to see. The Russians don’t let you in anyway, say it’s flooded. Maybe Adolf’s floating around down there, who knows? But it’s their sector and they can do what they want.” He smiled back at Liz. “You can get the Reichstag, though. Everybody wants a picture of that and the Russians don’t care.”

“You’re on,” she said, lowering the camera.

“If I can get us there. I know the way from Dahlem, but—”

Liz jerked her thumb toward Jake. “He used to live here.”

“You navigate then,” Ron said, shrugging, and motioned Liz into the jeep. “You can ride up front.” Another grin.

“Lucky me. Just keep your hands on the wheel. The whole U.S. Army’s got this problem with their hands.”

Jake paid no attention, the flirting a harmless buzz beside him. Some people had emerged from one of the piles of rubble, two women, and he watched them pick their way carefully over the bricks, listless, as if they were still shell-shocked. In the July heat they were wearing overcoats, afraid to leave them home in the basement of the ruined house, where everything, maybe even themselves, must be open for the taking. What had it been like these last few months? Carthage. Maybe she was like these two, burrowed in somewhere. But where? He realized for the first time, looking at the women, that he might not find her at all, that the bombs must have scattered people too, like bricks. But maybe not. He turned to the jeep, suddenly anxious to get there, a pointless urgency, as if everything that could have happened to her had not already happened.

He lifted himself into the back, next to Liz’s cases.

“Where first, the bunker?” Ron said to Liz, who nodded. He turned to Jake. “Which way?”

Not where he wanted to go, but stuck with it now, a favor to Liz. “Turn right at the end.”

Ron let out the clutch. “Don’t bother taking notes. Everybody says the same thing anyway. Lunar landscape. That’s the big one. And teeth. Rows of decayed teeth. AP had rotting
molars
. But maybe you’ll come up with something original. Be nice, something new.”

“How would you describe it?”

“Can’t,” Ron said, no longer flip. “Maybe nobody can. It’s—well, see for yourself.”

Jake headed them north on the Mehringdamm, but they were forced to detour east and in minutes were lost, streets blocked off or impassable, the whole map redrawn by debris. Five minutes back and already lost. They threaded their way through the ruins, Ron glancing back at him as if he were a broken compass until, luckily, another detour put them on the Mehringdamm again. A cleared stretch this time, which would get them to the Landwehrkanal, an easier route to follow than the unpredictable roads. Only the major streets had passable lanes, the others reduced to winding footpaths, when they were visible at all. Berlin, a flat city, finally had contours, new hills of brick. There was no life. Once he spotted children skittering over the rubble like crickets, and a working detail of women reclaiming bricks, their heads wrapped in kerchiefs against the dust, but otherwise the streets were quiet. The silence unnerved him. Berlin had always been a noisy city, the elevated S-bahn trains roaring across their trestle bridges, radios crackling in the apartment block courtyards, cars screeching at red lights, drunks arguing. Now he could hear the motor of the jeep and the eerie creaking of a single bicycle ahead of them, nothing else. A cemetery quiet. At night it would be pitch dark, the other side of the moon. Ron had been right—the unavoidable cliche.

At the Landwehrkanal there was more activity, but the smell was worse, raw sewage and corpses still floating on the water. The Russians had been here two months; had there been so many to fish out? But there they were, bodies stuck on the piles of the wrecked bridges or just suspended face down in the middle of the canal, held in place by nothing but the stagnant water. Liz had dropped her camera to hold a handkerchief over her mouth against the smell. No one said a word. Across the water, Hallesches Tor was gone.

They followed the canal toward the Potsdamer bridge, which took traffic. At one of the footbridges he saw his first men, shuffling across in gray Wehrmacht uniforms, still in retreat. He thought, inevitably, of the night he’d seen the transports set out for Poland, a big public display down the Linden, square-jawed faces out of a newsreel. These were blank and unshaven and almost invisible; women simply walked around them, not looking up.

There were landmarks now—the Reichstag in the far distance, and here in Potsdamerplatz the jagged remains of the department stores. Wertheim’s gone. A burned-out truck had been pushed to the side, but there was no traffic to block, just a few bicycles and some Russian soldiers leading a horse-drawn wagon. The old crowded intersection now had the feel of a silent movie, without the jerky rhythm. Instead, everything passed by in slow motion, even the bicycles, wary of punctures, and the wagon, plodding down a street as empty as the steppes. How many nights of bombing had it taken? Near the truck, a family sat on suitcases, staring into the street. Maybe just arrived at Anhalter Station, waiting for a phantom bus, or too tired and disoriented to go on.

“You have to feel sorry for the poor bastards,” Ron said, “you really do.”

“Who, the Germans?” Liz said.

“Yeah, I know. Still.”

They turned up the Wilhelmstrasse. Goering’s new Air Ministry, or its shell, had survived, but the rest of the street, the long line of pompous government buildings, lay in sooty heaps, their bricks spilling into the street like running sores. Where it had all started.

There was a crowd near the Chancellery, an unexpected popping of flashbulbs. Scattered applause.

“Look, it’s Churchill,” Liz said, grabbing her camera. “Pull over.”

“Guess they all want the tour,” Ron said, pretending to be bored but staring nevertheless at the stairs, starstruck.

Jake got out. Just where Hitler had stood smiling. Now it was Churchill, in a light summer uniform, cigar clenched in his teeth, surrounded by reporters. Brian next to him. How did he get here so fast? But Brian’s corklike ability to bob up everywhere was legendary. Churchill was stopping on the stairs, disconcerted by the applause. He raised his fingers in a V sign, a reflex, then dropped them, confused, aware suddenly of where he was. Jake glanced at the crowd. It was British soldiers who were applauding. The Germans stood silently, then moved away, embarrassed perhaps by their own curiosity, like people at an accident. Churchill frowned and hurried to the car.