City of Women

ELEVEN

THE TOMMIES COME and the Tommies go. Two raids in three nights, pummeling the factory districts to the north and east. The Deutsche Wochenschau shows soldiers serving bombed-out Berliners from portable field kitchens called “goulash cannons.” On the screen, everyone is grinning. But at the patent office, there is talk swirling about the aftermath that does not make the newsreels. The school gymnasiums as temporary morgues. Corpses laid out in rank and file for identification. Fragments of bodies in metal tubs on trestle tables.

At the Pension Unsagbar, there’s been an addition to the guests. A man in his middle forties. Sallow skin. A wing of greasy hair combed over a balding head and a pair of searching eyes. Grayish stubble on his chin and an absurd Führer mustache on his lip. He owns a dog-eared deck of cards, which he uses to lay out game after game of solitaire. He glares down at the columns of cards on the floorboards. Deuce of clubs on three of diamonds. Red on black on red.

“Who is he?”

Ericha is restocking the pantry shelves with a half dozen tins of canned sugar beets. “You mean what is his name?”

“I mean where did he come from?”

“From his accent, I’d say Moabit.”

“That’s very funny, but not what I’m asking.”

“He came through channels like everyone else. He calls himself Kozig.”

“And how do you know that he’s not a Gestapo spy?”

A look. “How do I know any of them aren’t? How do I know you’re not?”

“There’s something about him that’s different.”

“You mean he looks more Jewish.”

“I mean maybe he looks more hunted.”

“They’re all hunted. Are you forgetting that?”

“You have your instincts about people,” Sigrid says, “perhaps I have mine.”

Ericha glances at the man playing a card, then turns back to the pantry shelf. “He escaped,” she says, “from the SS quarantine in the Grosse Hamburger Strasse.” A flash of her eyes in Sigrid’s direction. “But he left his wife behind.”

“You’ve got to get them out of here.” This is Auntie talking. She has cornered Sigrid. “That raid last night was the final straw. Their nerves are stretched. The children especially. Up there, they feel like sitting ducks for the bombers.” Sigrid dares a glance at Anna Weiss, bleakly rocking her girls in her lap, covered by a blanket. Both children are staring into some unseen spot.

“You should talk to the young one,” is all Sigrid says, nodding once in Ericha’s direction.

“I have talked to her. Talked until I was blue, and I get nowhere. So now I am talking to the adult,” the old woman says. Then swallows her voice. “My brother, maybe you’ve heard, he’s a Party member and he likes to feel important.”

Sigrid says nothing.

“He has comrades in the SS,” Auntie tells her. “Old Fighters, who brag. So I learn things. And what I’ve learned is that the noose has tightened,” she says. “They say that, after Stalingrad, Goebbels was so incensed over Jews still working in the armament factories that he’s sworn to make Berlin Jew-free by the end of this month. That means twenty or thirty thousand Jews to be deported.”

Sigrid blinks starkly at this. “Thirty thousand?”

“Maybe they thought they were safe working a lathe or a handpress for the war industries,” Auntie says, frowning, “but they’re finding out differently now. Over a thousand a day are being shipped east in cattle cars. And the Gestapo are everywhere. I’ve seen the same Stapo bull twice now, loitering about the grocer’s down the street.”

Sigrid tastes a drop of dread. “You’re sure he’s Gestapo?”

“You think I can’t recognize one by now? Trilby hat, big leather overcoat. He might as well be wearing a sign,” she says, and scowls. “But for every one I do see there can be another half dozen I don’t. You’ve got to get them out of here,” Auntie declares. “You’ve got to talk to that girl of yours and make her understand.”

Sigrid draws a thick breath and shakes her head. The trouble is that Ericha is barely speaking to her since the night before. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promises dimly.

The room smells of wood rot and leaky plaster and nightly buckets of urine. And underneath, something else. An odor of desolation and chronic fear.

Sigrid kneels down beside Frau Weiss. The woman props up a frail smile in greeting, but it’s obvious that her beautiful confidence is starting to fray. “The girls were very frightened last night,” she whispers, still slowly rocking the children in her arms. “The guns. They were so loud.”

“The Zoo Tower. The gun emplacements have had bigger flak cannons installed,” Sigrid tells her. “It was in the newspapers.”

“Well.” A small shrug. “They are quite deafening.”

“I have something for the children,” Sigrid says. “Do they like chocolate?” She produces two pieces of bittersweet wrapped in foil from her bag—some of Renate’s contraband.

“Chocolate? Oh, yes.” Frau Weiss smiles, brushing the hair from Ruthi’s eyes. “These little ones love their chocolate. Don’t they?”

The children raise their eyes to Sigrid blankly, then gaze at the foil-wrapped chocolate. They accept the gift, but without expression.

“Now, what do you say to the kind lady?” their mother prompts.

“Thank you,” they chant together.

“Thank you, Frau Schröder. Be polite.”

“Thank you, Frau Schröder.”

Sigrid feels herself smile and, without realizing it, has begun stroking the little one’s curly mass of hair. “You’re most welcome,” she tells them.

“Mama,” good soldier Liesl says with innocence, “I want to save mine for Poppa.”

“What?” Frau Weiss sounds perplexed.

“I want to save mine for Poppa. Is that all right?”

“I want to save mine for Poppa, too,” Ruthi follows. Sigrid removes her hand.

Anna’s smile has dipped. “No, no. You needn’t do that.”

“But Poppa loves chocolate, too.” Liesl insists, her small face suddenly burdened. “I want him to have it.”

Her sister, at this point, has started to cry. “I want to give Poppa my chocolate. I want to save it for him.”

“Shhh, shhh.” Rocking her girls more tightly. “It’s all right. Poppa doesn’t need your chocolate. I’m sure there is plenty of chocolate where he is, and he would want you to have yours. Now, this kind lady has brought you a delicious gift. You should enjoy it.” But by now, Sigrid has receded. She has removed her hand from the child’s head, and can only watch as the woman tries to rebuild the invisible shelter around her children. She catches Frau Weiss’s eyes for only an instant before she must look away. She cannot bear to see a mother’s terror in the eyes of her lover’s wife.

THEY ARE WALKING to the U-Bahn station past the spires of a tall brick church pointing toward the empty evening sky. Heads down, the cold breath of winter in the air.

“Auntie says you won’t listen to her.” Sigrid frowns.

“Most people say that.”

“Well, she also says that her current pension guests must be moved.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Are you?”

“Don’t you think I know how desperate things are? Don’t you think I know? That pig from the printing office wanted five hundred marks for a single month’s worth of ration cards. Five hundred. Next month it could be twice that. I know we’re running out of resources and I know Auntie’s getting nervous, but what am I supposed to do that I’m not already doing? They need papers, Sigrid. I can’t move them without documents.” So seldom does Ericha address her by her given name that the sound has a bite to it.

“But I thought. I mean, don’t you have a source for that?”

“I did, but now I don’t,” she says.

“And does that surprise you, considering your method of payment?”

“That’s really not very helpful,” the girl declares sharply. “Really not very helpful at all.”

A tram sparks past, its blackout lights glowing like fireflies in the dusk. “So what happened to you?” she asks.

Sigrid blinks. “To me?”

“You know what I mean. Your new soldier friend. The Herr Leutnant.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“No? I wonder.”

“Nothing happened. Besides, I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“Does he have a big cock?”

Sigrid stops so suddenly that several Berliners nearly collide with her. “Can’t you watch where you’re going?” a hausfrau scolds her brashly. “There are people walking, you know.”

“I don’t expect to be insulted by you,” she tells Ericha.

“And I don’t expect to be lied to by you.”

“I have not lied to you.”

“No, you’ve simply mislaid a bit of truth. Look, I wouldn’t care about whose bed you’re filling, but for the fact that you have made a commitment to the work we do. How do I know that you won’t let something slip when you’re lying under the blankets with this man. He’s an officer. You could compromise everything.”

“I won’t do that.”

“How do I know you won’t?”

“Because, little one, you must trust me,” Sigrid answers. Then removes the edge from her voice. “You must trust me.”

Ericha’s eyes burn fearfully for an instant. Then she turns away. They walk wordlessly forward until, “There's a man been hanging about down the street,” Sigrid says. “Auntie thinks he’s Gestapo.”

Ericha gives her only the briefest of glances. “Auntie sees Gestapo men everywhere,” is her only response.

“Are you still in there?”

“What?” Sigrid looks up sharply at her mother-in-law across the table.

“I said, are you still in there?”

“In there?” Trying to snap back to the present. “Yes. Yes,” she answers curtly. “Still.”

“Good. I thought maybe you’d fallen into a coma.”

“Only tired,” she lies. She rubs at the claw of pain in her head. Stirs the oily cabbage soup in front of her. An official voice yaks at them stridently over the radio, dispensing valuable information about nothing. “Must we?” Sigrid asks.

Blowing on a spoonful from her bowl. “Must we what?”

“Have the wireless?”

Mother Schröder looks up from her bowl and dips in her slice of bread. “Why not? Certainly, you have nothing to say these days. Why should I be forced to eat in silence?”

Sigrid drops her spoon and shoves herself away from the table. “Never mind. God forbid we should ever have a moment without some squawking jackdaw filling our ears with noise.”

“I happen to be waiting for my program, if that’s allowed,” her mother-in-law calls after her reproachfully, but Sigrid is not listening. She tugs open the cabinet above the sink. “I’m taking one of your cigarettes,” she announces.

“Well. Nice of you to ask.”

Striking a kitchen match, she ignites the tip of one of the old lady’s abominations and inhales its poisonous taste.

“Look, there’s no reason for you to be hopping up in the middle of supper. If you must have the radio off, fine. Turn it off, and sit back down. Your soup is going cold.”

Somewhere in the old woman’s voice, Sigrid senses an appeal, a thread of need. Is it loneliness? But she is in no mood to accommodate her, in any case, and takes a short, vicious pleasure in squashing the plea. “If you’re so concerned, then you eat it,” she replies. “It tastes like horse piss anyway.” Mother Schröder’s back stiffens abruptly, but then her eyes drop to hide the injury. The pleasure of the attack dissipates in a blink, and is replaced by a sting of shame, but before Sigrid can say another word, there’s a knock at the door that dispels all else as the two women share the sharp ends of the same look. The knock repeats itself firmly. Sigrid inhales smoke, then tamps the cigarette in one of her mother-in-law’s tin ashtrays. “I’ll get it,” she says as calmly as possible. Crossing to the door, she opens it with only a heartbeat’s hesitation, then steps back with an audible intake of breath.

It’s a soldier. He looms largely in his Landser’s uniform, filling up the threshold with a kind of burdened authority. One side of his face is brutally scarred, so that the texture of his skin resembles sandpaper. His nose is crooked and plasticized, and a corner of his mouth is stitched into an artificial grimace. He seems to accept her gasp with practiced tolerance. “Frau Schröder?” he inquires.

Trying to recover herself, her hand at her throat. “Yes.”

“My name is Kurtz, Frau Schröder. I’m a comrade of your husband’s.”

“My husband?” A blankness enters her voice.

“What is it? What’s happened?” Mother Schröder is demanding anxiously. The Landser’s eyes flick toward the old woman, but then back to Sigrid. “He’s been wounded.”

“Wounded?” she hears her mother-in-law repeat with a swift bleakness. But Sigrid herself can find no words. The silence she craved a moment before now steals her voice.

“Not critically,” the Landser assures them tonelessly, and then turns his head as Mother Schröder paces forward.

“What happened? Do you know what happened?”

“He told me his company had orders to hold a position outside of Rzhev. They were dug in for the night when Ivan dropped a few mortars onto their position. He took a dose of shrapnel.”

“And where is he?” the old woman must know.

“Recovering. There’s an army hospital north of Smolensk. It’s where we met. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be getting the notice soon. I’ve been rotated off the line, but I told him that I would look you up on my way through Berlin. Personally.”

Silence. The women stare at the disfigured face dumbly, until the man clears his throat. “Well… so I’ve kept my promise.”

At that point Sigrid suddenly finds her voice. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Please, come in. Are you hungry? We have some soup.”

But the soldier is already waving the offer away. “No. No, thank you. You’re kind, but I came here straight from the train and still have to report in.”

“Well. Thank you,” Sigrid tells him, touching the door. “Thank you for…” For what? The words don’t want to form. The Landser glances at her hand on the door, and she jerks it away, embarrassed at her desire to shut him out. “For your friendship to Kaspar,” she says.

The Landser breathes out, and chucks his duffel bag onto one shoulder. “I’m not sure ‘friendship’ is the word, Frau Schröder. I’m not sure there is a word for what one front-liner owes to another. In any case,” he says with a nod, “I’ll say good night.”

PREPARING FOR BED that night, Sigrid pauses as she sits on the mattress and gazes at the photo of Kaspar in his dress uniform, but the photographer shot the picture in profile, so he is turning his face away from her. The night before he had reported for induction they had made love. She had wanted to. She had wanted to touch his body. To memorize it with her hands, so that she would remember. At least, she felt, she owed him that much. At least it was her duty to remember. But when he climaxed it was so unlike him; his howl had been so raw, as if he was in agony, and she couldn’t help but think: This is how he will cry out when his flesh is torn in battle. Bullets, shrapnel, foreign metal ripping through the body she has just committed to memory, that’s how he will sound. Afterward, as he slept, she could only see his silent face as a death mask.

IN THE MORNING, leaving for the patent office, she glances briefly at the door to the flat across the landing. Should she feel guilt? Why doesn’t she? What is missing from her that she does not feel guilt over adultery? And now Kaspar, a victim of the war. She should be speared by guilt. But mostly she feels confused, as if trying to find her way through some kind of maze.

She stands there for some time until she realizes that she has been holding her breath. Then she exhales and continues down the stairs.

It takes another four days before a letter arrives from the army, informing her that that her husband, Kaspar Albrecht Schröder, Feldwebel, 34. Infanterie-Division, 34. Füsilier-Regiment, Battalion 2, has been wounded while in service to the Führer, Volk, and Fatherland.