The Kingdom of Shadows (42 page)

Such would be easily believed by the American producer; Wise had no doubt seen as much for himself. Since Wise’s arrival in Berlin on the coattails of the U.S. Army, after the Russian artillery had at last gone silent, there would have been plenty of time to tour the devastated areas, the streets that still stank of corpses not yet dug out from the rubble. Long before now, von Behren had grown sick of the war and its aftermath; he could barely wait for the day when he’d step off the the train at Union Station and walk out underneath the palm trees and caressing sunshine. The reports were already circulating through the Military Government offices about how many deaths from cold and starvation were likely when winter rolled across Europe; the sites where the mass graves would be dug had already been marked on the Occupation maps. He was planning on being well away before that grim time came.

“Guess you’ll be glad to get out of here.”

“How soon?” He asked the most important question. “Before we leave?”

Wise shrugged. “Might be a few weeks yet. I tried, but I couldn’t arrange a flight out for us. There’s a limit to what I can do. We’ll have to wait until there’s a ship sailing out of Marseilles, see if we can squeeze onto that.”

“It is perhaps for the best.” Von Behren lifted the viewfinder to his eye and sighted through it. “A shame that my film will remain unfinished. Wouldn’t that have been an excellent item to bring back with us to Hollywood? A print of the rough cut of
Der Rote Jäger
.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Wise scanned across the ruins, then turned his gaze back to him. “There are always other movies to make. As long as you’ve got your talent lined up.” He frowned. “Actually, that’s why I came looking for you. I was thinking Marte might have been here.”

“Ah, yes. Our leading lady.” Von Behren smiled again. “I’m afraid I can’t help you at the moment. She and her cousin, young Iosefni, disappeared this morning on one of their mysterious errands.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Why should they tell me anything?” He shrugged. “But you have no reason to fear. Pawli is quite devoted to her. What harm could come to them now?”

Wise nodded, though his expression remained troubled. Von Behren could tell what the man was thinking.
Mysterious
was indeed the word for Marte Helle now, even more so than before. Her quiet beauty was even more evident, but in a way that had somehow touched a cold hand to his heart when he had seen her again. Perhaps something had formed inside her, like ice, where there had only been emptiness before. That was to be expected, he supposed; no one could walk through the war and come out unchanged. He hadn’t.

There was one physical change in Marte that von Behren had pointed out to
Herr
Wise, the director’s hand gesturing toward the image on the screen. Her eyes, that had both been blue before. Something had happened, as in old stories of a person’s hair turning white in one day. Now her eyes were like those of her distant relation, one still blue, the other transformed to golden-brown. As if a mask had been stripped away, revealing the true face, the cold, level gaze beneath . . .

In black-and-white, the change was noticeable only in extreme close-up, and he had already made plans to work around those, using outtakes from the reels he’d shot before. When
Der Rote Jäger
was completed, it would be unlikely that anyone in the audience would be able to tell what had happened.

Small details; Wise had shrugged them off. “You better have a talk with her,” the American said now. “This city’s still hardly the safest place in the world in which to go wandering off. And if you’re going to have your things pulled together before the ship sails – all of you – you’d better get busy.”

“Yes, yes; of course.” Von Behren slipped the viewfinder into his pocket. “She has already made a promise to me about that. I expect she will keep it.”

Herr
Wise left him still poking through the studio rubble. As he watched the American thread his way through the wreckage in the streets, he tried to push Marte’s face out of his thoughts.

Another remembered image rose inside him, unbidden, evoked by a glimpse down one of the rubble-filled streets, of the burnt and twisted ruins of the Reich Chancellery. That was where he had been, before making his way over here to the remains of the old studio. A group of Russian soldiers, their rifles slung behind their backs, had waved him over. They had known he was German, but it hadn’t seemed to matter to matter to them now. Alcohol made them friendly and expansive; von Behren had handed their
schnapps
bottle back, nodded and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and let himself be led by the elbow toward something lying on the ground. The other Russians had drawn back so he could have a clear view.

“
Alles kaput
,” the Russian soldier beside von Behren had said. He spat at the dark, elongated object at their booted feet.

It had been a corpse, charred by gasoline, but not enough to have done more than blacken and shrivel the flesh upon the skeleton within. The first indication that von Behren had received, of what had happened to the bunker’s occupants. He had looked down at the corpse lying on its back, its slitted eye-sockets staring up at the sky above the shattered city.
It’s Goebbels
, he had thought suddenly; he could recognize the former Reichsminister, even in this state. Von Behren’s stomach had coiled into a sour knot as he sensed the vestiges of evil and desire still emanating from the dead thing before him. One of its hands, coal-black as the rest of the body, had been raised up into the air, as though trying to claw a hold upon some vision above it . . .

An angry Soviet political officer had suddenly arrived on the scene, shouting and waving von Behren back from the corpse on the ground. The other soldiers, one of them hastily concealing the bottle inside his heavy woolen greatcoat, had retreated, looking embarrassed. He’d made his own retreat then; a few of the Russian soldiers had waved goodbye to him, receiving sharp glares from the officer as reprimand.

The image of what had been the Reich minister remained sharp in his mind, Goebbels’ face reduced to blackened ash. Von Behren made his way down from the ruins of the studio, back to the street. He kept walking. There were other things that were more pleasing to dwell on. Such as leaving here at last, and going anywhere else.

* * *

“This is the place.” Pavli looked up at the block of flats. The buildings on either side had been gutted by fire, and the windows of this one had been shattered. A few had been boarded up, but most still gaped empty, or with broken-armed crosses dangling from their centers. He checked again the tattered scrap of paper. “She said to come here.”

Beside him, Marte nodded as she gazed up at the facade blackened by smoke. She had turned up the collar of the soldier’s coat and covered her hair with a rough woolen scarf, so nobody would be likely to recognize her. They had taken back alleys and picked their way across the streets where the mounds of debris were highest, keeping their faces averted from any others wandering the city.

“I remember . . .” She touched Pavli’s shoulder. “Her name. When we were at the
Lebensborn
hostel. It was Liesel.”

The note that had been delivered to her bore no signature. Pavli had been with her when a silent
Wehrmacht
veteran, with a head swathed in dirty bandages and limping along on crutches, had brought it. The words it had contained, about her son, had been enough. Marte had nothing with which to pay the soldier but a stone-hard heel of bread, but that was enough. He had turned with a bare nod of thanks and disappeared back into the shadows of the cratered streets.

“Let me go first.” The aspect of the building, the dark entrance hallway behind the front door, aroused misgivings in Pavli. He stepped through, regretting now that he hadn’t brought any matches or a candle stub to light the way. Marte followed close behind him as he groped for the railing of the stairs.

He heard laughter and the voice of an American, footsteps coming heavy toward them. At the landing, he drew Marte back against the wall; a G.I. with his cap pushed far back on his head, his arm around the shoulders of a German woman, tromped past without seeing the two of them, trailing the smell of alcohol and raw-scented
eau de cologne
. When their raucous noise had gone out into the street, Marte could no longer be restrained; she pushed Pavli aside and ran up the rest of the steps.

“Ah – and here is our famous actress! How thoughtful of you to pay a visit.”

Pavli caught up with her at the end of the top floor’s corridor. Daylight poked through the charred roof timbers. He leaned into the room with his hands braced against the doorway, catching his breath, and saw Marte standing before another woman lying with her back against the arm of a stained
Biedermeyer
sofa. The woman’s mocking smile revealed a tooth missing at one corner of her mouth.

“Where is he?” Marte’s hands trembled at her sides. “My son . . .”

“Such impatience!” The woman turned her smile toward Pavli, trying to draw him in. “All these years that when she couldn’t have cared less about her little boy’s welfare, and now everything has to be done at once.” The smile disappeared as she looked again at Marte. “Years when
I
took care of him – when he was as much my child as yours.”

Pavli saw the room’s contents now, the cases of canned goods with markings in both English and German, the unopened bottles of liquor, cartons of cigarettes and the flat, dark bars of American chocolate. An untidy heap of women’s clothing lay on the floor, some new looking, other pieces shabby and worn. The woman herself had streaks of grey in her blond hair, though Marte had told him that she was the same age as her; her cheeks bore patches of rouge nearly as bright and unnatural as her reddened lips. He could easily guess that the girl with the American soldier, who had passed them by on the stairs, was in this woman’s employ, in one of the few businesses that could flourish between the victors and the defeated.

“Your note said you have him here with you –” Marte turned her head, her eyes puzzled, as though she were trying to catch a more elusive scent through the room’s cloying perfume. “I don’t . . .” She brought her gaze back to the woman. “Where is he? I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you anything you want –”

“Yes, of course. You
will
pay me. You’ll pay me a great deal.” The woman poured from a bottle into a teacup on the low table before her. She held the liquor up toward Pavli, smiling coquettishly, then shrugged and set it back down on the floor when he shook his head. “And that’s as it should be, isn’t it? Because everything you have is stolen from me.” Her voice became tight and harsh, her eyes glaring now at Marte. “Everything – right down to that fool who fathered your bastard. He should have been mine as well, but you stole him from me, with your coy little ways and your pretty face –”

“Please . . .” The woman’s vehemence seemed to stun Marte. “I don’t know what you’re talking about . . .”

“Yes, you do – you’ve always known. He should have been the father of my child, so you see, it makes sense, doesn’t it – the boy
is
my child, isn’t he? And all your money and fame – it should have been
me
up on the screens, with everybody looking at me and adoring me. You’re nothing, a mongrel bitch, compared to me. So everything you have is stolen, it’s
mine
, and now it’s time to pay it back to me.
Everything
.”

“Where is he?” Marte’s expression became even more frantic, the room trapping her. “I don’t . . . I don’t
feel
him here.” She turned back to Pavli in the doorway, tears trembling in her eyes. “My child . . . I don’t feel him anywhere! I knew he was alive . . . when you first came to me . . . but now –” Her voice broke into a cry. “I don’t know! I can’t feel him anymore!”