City of Women

SEVENTEEN

THEY HAVE RETURNED to the bench in the Tiergarten near the Lutherbrücke. There’s a raw, damp wind blowing, following the Spree up from the lakes and riffling through the limbs of the poplars and black chestnuts. Ericha is bundled in a ragged jacket, and her shoes are starting to display a certain shabbiness from constant wear. The leather cracked. The sole separating from the uppers at strategic seams. She attempts to strike a match for her cigarette. No sign of Franz, but this time Sigrid does not mention him. Finally the match catches and Ericha lights up. A shiver passes through her body like a wire.

“What happened to the warm coat you had?” Sigrid asks, but Ericha only shrugs off such a question. Avoids eye contact.

“Your hands and face are chapped.”

“I’m on the move a lot” is all the girl says. “Don’t worry about me. What do you have to tell me?”

“I have the money,” Sigrid answers. “For the ship passages.”

Finally Ericha looks at her.

“Don’t ask,” Sigrid tells her, stealing a drag from her bitter cigarette.

Ericha shakes her head. “I wasn’t going to.” Her eyes have taken on the depth of the river as she accepts the cigarette back. Sigrid clears the long sidewalk leading off the bridge with another German glance, then digs into her bag. “Put this in your pocket,” she tells Ericha, and presses Melnikov’s envelope into the girl’s chapped hand. “There should be enough there for everything.”

Ericha quickly stuffs it into her coat, then stares into Sigrid’s face. “You see, Frau Schröder,” she says. “I wasn’t wrong about you.”

“Yes, yes. You have the Menschenkenntnis. So I’ve heard. Inside the envelope there’s also an address. Written on the back of a cigarette card.”

“An address?”

“Auntie can’t help you. It’s the address of someone who can.”

A moment of grayness. “You mean an abortionist?”

“Use some of the money. There’s plenty,” Sigrid tells her. “All you need to know is on the card.” But when she looks back at Ericha’s silence, she asks, “It’s what you want, isn’t it? Isn’t it what you want?”

But Ericha only gazes at her, her face stamped with dread. “Will you come with me?” she finally asks.

“I can’t. I’d be a danger to you,” Sigrid tells her, after a German glance. “Do you recall the Kommissar from the cinema? He appeared at my work and questioned me in the director’s office.”

“Questioned?”

“About my relationship with you. I told him nothing, of course, but you can see how it makes me a liability. Even now it could be dangerous for us to be sharing this bench. I must have changed trains a half dozen times to make sure no one was following me.”

“And was there?”

“Not as yet,” she says with a glance over her shoulder. “At least not that I could see. But who knows what the Herr Kommissar has up his sleeve? He could reappear at any moment and decide to cart me off. So I think this is the last time we should meet for a while.”

Ericha directs her gaze at the cracked slate of the sidewalk and smokes. Sigrid closes her eyes at the silence between them.

Then she hears, “I don’t care.”

“What?”

“I don’t care if you’ve been questioned. I don’t care if Heinrich Himmler is spying on you from your pantry closet. You’re no more a liability to anyone than I am. It’s me whom the Gestapo is after. I’m the danger.” And then she says, “I’ve been thinking about turning myself in.”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s not. If I give myself up to them, then the danger will be removed.”

“And what about the people you are hiding? The lives you have been protecting. Who will get them out?”

“You will.”

Sigrid very nearly laughs. “Now, that is ridiculous.”

“I think it is not.”

“Ericha, you’re frightened. I understand. I am frightened, too. But those little girls, their mother. They need you. Not me. Not anyone else. Compared to you, the rest of us are just running errands.”

Ericha says nothing.

“You are not going to turn yourself in. Do you understand me, child? I will not permit it.”

Slowly, Ericha drops her cigarette and grinds it out. “You will never,” she says, “be a liability to me, Frau Schröder.”

The camera flash bleaches the room as Sigrid turns the key in the lock. There is a pretty girl, her dress hanging loose around her hips, naked from the waist up. She wears a mask of comic shock, clutching a handful of letters as Auntie’s former pension guest, Herr Kozig, now costumed in a postman’s uniform, cups her breasts from behind. Her hair is wrapped in gooseberry braids. Postman Kozig wears a grin below his postage-stamp mustache, as he leers down at the flesh he is fondling. It’s a bit of a shock to see him so employed, but Wolfram was right. The uniform carries him. Their eyes dart to Sigrid when she enters, but neither breaks his pose. They are obviously under strict orders.

Wilhelmina von Hohenhoff peers up from behind her camera. “Concentrate!” she snaps, then follows their eyes. Her face is still as imperious as a hussar’s when she glares at Sigrid’s intrusion. “That door was locked,” she declares.

“Someone,” Sigrid answers, “gave me the key.” And that’s when Ericha shows herself. For a hard moment, the woman’s stare does not lessen, until she turns back to her camera.

“One more shot,” she announces.

“SO YOU’RE JUDGING ME?”

“What, Herr Kozig?” Sigrid says.

The female model has dressed and departed, but Herr Kozig is still in his postal uniform, tugging uncomfortably at the collar. “The photographic pose,” he answers. “The young woman in undress. I saw the look on your face.”

“And what look did you see, Herr Kozig, exactly?”

“You’re not my rabbi, gnädige Frau. This lady,” he says with a hand in the direction of Fräulein von Hohenhoff, “this lady has generously agreed to give me a place to sleep. I was only repaying her kindness by assisting her in her work.”

“Of course you were, Herr Kozig. And such demanding work, too.”

Herr Kozig frowns sheepishly, but then Fräulein von Hohenhoff claps her hands for attention. She has rolled out a rack of clothing into the center of the room. Dresses, coats, hats on hooks, shoes on the bottom rack. “I have nothing that will fit the children, but if anyone is in need, they should feel free to take.” Sigrid notes that the woman has yet to speak directly to Ericha, but rather skirts her, including her only in the nonspecific plural. If anyone is in need. Frau Weiss steps up to the rack, and touches a coat sleeve. “Oh, this is so lovely. It’s been years since I’ve seen something stylish. I can’t imagine.”

“You like it? It’s yours,” Fräulein von Hohenhoff announces without fanfare, and opens up a tall white photographer’s scrim. “That stool, please, over here,” she directs Kozig, who quickly obeys. “The children,” she directs, “must sit very still. No fidgeting. And no talking.”

And then each face is frozen by an instant of flash. Face forward. No left ears showing. Frau Weiss looking exhausted, the little girls obedient and blank. Herr Kozig, in uniform, scowls bureaucratically back at the camera. Sigrid looks at her watch, her belly full of acid.

“You’re next,” Sigrid tells Ericha.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re not exactly going to get very far under your own name any longer, so you’re next.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me? I’m a kriegsfrau. My papers have all been properly issued. What else do I need?”

Ericha looks at her with suspicion. But then steps in front of the scrim.

Fräulein von Hohenhoff raises her eye from the camera’s viewfinder long enough to peer at her. Then sinks back down. “Eyes open,” she warns, and then pulls the trigger on the flashgun. Ericha meets the burst of sharp white light without blinking.

“Thank you,” Sigrid hears. She turns and faces Frau Weiss. The two girls are holding on to her, eyes large, their mother’s hands petting their heads. “I know that sounds like such a small thing to say, considering what you are doing for us. What you are risking. But I don’t know how else to put it.”

Sigrid gazes back into the woman’s face. A woman from Vienna and her two daughters. Strangers. No longer part of the story she has been telling herself. “You’re welcome. I wish I could say it was because it’s the right thing to do. That’s why she does it,” she says, nodding to where Ericha is seated on a chair, covertly trying on a new pair of shoes. “But me? I’m not sure. Guilt, maybe. Hope. I don’t know.”

Frau Weiss nods with thoughtful eyes. “Well,” she replies, “whatever the reason. You’re doing it. Which is more than most can say.” The littlest, with the tiger, tugs on her mother’s sleeve and whispers. “Ah,” her mother tells her. “Yes. A good idea for all of us. Is there a WC?” she asks.

“WHEN WILL THEY BE READY?”

Sigrid has stepped up to Fräulein von Hohenhoff as she is lifting the scrim. “The photographs.”

“I’ll print them tonight.”

“Good. I’ll be by in the morning to collect them.” Then, “What about him? Your new model?” she inquires, glancing at “Postman” Kozig, who is examining his official identity in one of the floor-length mirrors, his chin clean-shaven now, his postage-stamp mustache neatly trimmed. Shed, temporarily, of the U-boat shoddiness he wore in Auntie’s attic.

“He snores. Loudly. I can hear him through the wall. For that reason alone, I want him out. But he can’t stay past tonight, in any case. Tomorrow evening there are people coming to my studio.”

“People?”

“Clients. Some of them Party members. I doubt I will be able to convince them that he is the butler.”

“I understand. I’ll collect him along with the photos. Has he said anything?”

“Such as?”

“Such as anything.”

“No, I put him to work.”

“So I saw.”

“Everyone works,” she answers in a mildly distracted way. “There is no free ride. Everyone earns their keep.”

“Well, he hardly seems to have objected,” Sigrid observes.

But the tone of Fräulein von Hohenhoff’s voice changes. “Do you mind, may I speak with you for a moment?” she asks. Sigrid follows her over to the screened-off area where the photographs of the schnauzers watch with blunt canine inquiry as Fräulein von Hohenhoff lights a cigarette. “I’d like a realistic assessment,” she declares.

“Of what?”

“Of their chances.”

“Realistically? I don’t know. Possibly their chances are not very good. There are certainly plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. But one hopes otherwise. One must believe otherwise. What else can be done?”

“And what about her?”

“Her?”

“You know who.”

Sigrid can only answer, “I cannot tell the future, Fräulein von Hohenhoff.”

“Then what use are you?” she breathes, but then shakes her head. “Look, all I can do is give money. I can’t give it to her, but I can give it to you,” she says, and presses a pearl gray stationery envelope into Sigrid’s palm.

“Thank you. It will help,” Sigrid tells her, but Fräulein von Hohenhoff only shakes her head, and glares furiously at the smoke she expels from her cigarette, her eyes gone wet. “It’s a fucking crime,” she whispers. “How a creature like that can burrow into you, so you can’t get her out. It’s just a fucking crime.”

Down in the stairwell, waiting for Frau Weiss and her children, Ericha lights another cigarette. She has picked out a new coat and new shoes from the rack, and looks better, less disheveled. But her eyes are still oven pits. “I’m going tomorrow,” she says. “To the address you gave me.”

“I’ll come with you,” Sigrid says.

“No. I know I asked you to, but I’ve changed my mind. This is something… It’s my problem. I’d rather just do it alone.”

Voices at the top of the stairs. The children descending with their mother.

“Ericha,” Sigrid whispers. “You sound as if you’re punishing yourself.”

“I’ll contact you soon,” Ericha replies quickly, and opens the door to the street. “All is clear,” she says, and steps out onto the sidewalk.

The next morning is Saturday. Sigrid is making breakfast. Ersatz coffee. Powdered eggs as tasty as powdered laundry soap. Stale bread that she toasts in the oven for Kaspar. Her mother-in-law has left early. She has volunteered to accompany Mundt once a week to the Party office in the Jägerstrasse to sort through the mountains of clothes, shoes, combs, stockings, and coats collected for the frontline troops and for bombing victims.

“Give my regards to the Portierfrau,” Sigrid tells her, filling the coffeepot with water. “I’m sure she’ll give you an earful of all my anti-social remarks.”

Mother Schröder issues her a penetrating look as she is slipping on her gloves. “You think this is a joke?” she asks solemnly. “Someone has to maintain our good name with the Party.”

When Kaspar emerges from the bedroom, he is dressed in one of the few suits Sigrid has left in the wardrobe. The clothing hangs on him as if he were a scarecrow. “Look,” he says, grinning darkly. “I can attend a fancy-dress ball as a civilian.”

But the sight pains Sigrid. “You’ve lost so much weight,” she whispers. Kaspar only shrugs and sits down at the table. As she sets his plate in front of him, she asks him, “You have exercises this morning?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Do you think they’re helping?”

“Tossing the medicine ball with my fellow cripples, all for the greater glory of the Fatherland. Of course it’s helping. It’s making me a better German. Can’t you tell?”

“Will you be bringing your comrades back with you tonight?”

Sawing into the powered eggs on toast with his knife and fork. “My comrades?”

“Unteroffizier Kamphauser,” says Sigrid. “Unteroffizier Messner.”

He shakes his head for a moment. “They’re imbeciles,” he tells her. He’s chewing but doesn’t appear to be tasting. His face is devoid of expression. “Only imbeciles survive, it seems.” And then he asks, “What about you?”

“Me?”

“What is on the agenda for Frau Schröder’s day?”

“Errands.” She pours coffee into his cup, then turns away from his eyes, and starts scraping the skillet with the metal spatula. “Shopping and whatnot.”

“Are you seeing him?”

Sigrid stops, the spatula frozen in her hand. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know where he is right now. I’m sorry, Kaspar. I can’t have this conversation. I simply can’t.” She abandons the skillet in the sink. He says nothing as she pulls on her coat and ties on her scarf. But before she leaves, she is compelled to kiss him quickly on the forehead.

He stops her, taking her arm. “Are you in trouble?” he asks.

She gazes at him. “Yes.”

“How deeply?”

“Deeply enough.”

“So tell me,” he suggests, but she can only shake her head.

“What can I tell you, Kaspar?” she asks sadly. “What good could it possibly do?”

To that he has no answer.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I will do my best to keep you out of it.”

But as she turns to go, he still holds on to her arm. “Is he a soldier?” He asks. “There’s no shame, Sigrid. There are plenty of men who’ve simply had enough of this war. If you’re hiding him—”

“Kaspar,” she says, and nearly spills it. Nearly lets the truth burst out of her. But instead she simply shakes her head and removes his hand from her arm. He does not resist.

A TRAFFIC JAM on the stairwell. As Sigrid descends, she finds that this is not only the morning Frau Granzinger is leaving for the country with her brood and new duty-year girl in formation, but that it is also the morning the Frau Obersturmführer returns from Breslau, now hugely swollen. She watches them collide in the building’s foyer. Frau Granzinger, looming largely in her monstrous traveling cloak and flat-brimmed hat, is herding the children with her usual impatience, hurling orders at the skinny duty-year girl, in a hurry to make it to the trains before the bombers come. The Frau Obersturmführer is accompanied by a teenaged Hitler Jungvolk toting her luggage, who tries in vain to maintain his military posture in front of the skinny girl, as he is shoved aside by the hefty taxi driver handling Granzinger’s steamer trunk.

“Ah, Frau Schröder,” the Frau Obersturmführer calls to her. Her voice is stiffly cheery. Her face bloated, strained, and pale as lard.

“You’ve returned, Frau Obersturmführer,” Sigrid observes, hesitantly.

“Yes.” The woman nods, trying not to mind the jostling from Granzinger’s spawn.

“Friedrich! Mind your manners, you little monster,” Granzinger barks, and slaps the boy’s head. “My apologies, Frau Obersturmführer. We’re trying to catch a train.”

“You’re leaving Berlin?”

“For Eberswalde, yes,” Granzinger answers. “Where there are no bombers and no bombs. My sister runs a hotel with her husband. She’s always looking for reliable help with the cleaning and cooking. Helga! Leave your brother alone, do you hear? I’m so sorry, Frau Obersturmführer, but we must be going. I’d say welcome home, only you can keep this town, as far as I’m concerned. I grew up here, but I’m done with the place now.” With that, she bustles out the door, shouting at the taxi driver to mind the steamer.

“Up the stairs to the fourth floor,” the young Frau instructs the Jungvolk boy, who only briefly hesitates at the daunting task of hauling the Frau Obersturmführer’s heavy cases up the stairs.

Sigrid falls in step beside the young woman, taking her traveling bag and offering her arm as a crutch.

“I must be heavy as a cow by now,” the Frau Obersturmführer announces with a painful smile.

“What happened?” Sigrid hears herself asks.

“What?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound so inquisitive. But I thought you were going to be staying in Breslau. For the birth.”

“I was. But things,” the Frau Obersturmführer tells her, “things didn’t quite work out. My mother, you see, she is not the easiest person to live with. We quarreled. It was silly, really. But there it is. And here I am.”

“Yes,” Sigrid agrees. “Here you are.”

IT TAKES SIGRID LONGER to get to the Kantstrasse than she anticipated. The trains are stalled because of a water main rupture. Or a suicide on the tracks. Or because the Feldgendarmerie are combing the cars for deserters. All of these are theories advanced as absolute fact by Berliners trapped in the underground cans with her. But when the train budges forward, further discussion ceases. The train had stopped, and now it’s moving again. What more does anyone need to say?

When she finds Herr Kozig near the bronze of Wagner across from Fräulein von Hohenhoff’s studio, a frown stamped on his face below the postage-stamp mustache, he has lost the sullen snugness that he cultivated as a U-boat resident of Auntie’s Pension Unsagbar, and is overtly anxious over Sigrid’s tardiness. He is out of his postal uniform, with a rucksack over his shoulder and a bandage wrapped around his head that covers one eye. His clothes are still shabby, but whose aren’t? And now at least his shoes are in decent order. She greets him formally, in a loud enough voice for others waiting at the stop to hear. “So sorry to keep you waiting,” she says, and smiles. “Shall we walk?” Only a few eyes edge briefly in their directions.

“I was worried. I thought you’d been picked up,” he whispers urgently to her as they walk briskly past the sculpture-laden façade of the Theater des Westens.

“No, just delayed. Couldn’t be helped. You have the photographs?”

“Yes,” he says, and covertly hands over an envelope. “You haven’t mentioned my disguise,” he points out, referring to the bandage. “It was the Fräulein’s idea. She thought it would make me look like a bombing casualty.”

Sigrid quickly inserts the envelope into her bag. “Very genuine.” Across the street she spies Ericha’s stocky taxi driver with the scar, leaning against the door of a green-back cab. He gives her a quick look, lifting his eyes from a folded newspaper.

“She’s really a very remarkable woman, Fräulein von Hohenhoff,” Kozig tells her enthusiastically. “Don’t you agree? And not unattractive for her age.”

But Sigrid does not answer. She has spotted Franz waiting for them, shed for once of his signature coat and trilby, and dressed in a heavy oilcloth jacket and worker’s cap. Parked at the curb is a rickety Ford lorry with a gas generator attached. But when she turns her eyes to Herr Kozig, something is wrong. He has stopped in his tracks, his face suddenly drained.

“What is it?”

“That man up ahead by the lorry. He’s Gestapo.”

“What?”

“He’s Gestapo, I said.”

“Don’t be absurd. That’s impossible.”

“I know what I know. And what I know is that that man works for the Gestapo. We’ve got to get out of here.” And before Sigrid can attempt another word, he breaks away in a panic. Sigrid swivels back to look at Franz. He has taken a step forward with uncertainty, but then freezes up. She follows his eyes, and feels her color drain as well.

Two men in leather trench coats are jumping out of a black Benz sedan. She hears a popping noise, and one of the headlamps on Franz’s lorry bursts. Everything is racing around her, but at the same time moving very slowly. She can see the gun now in Kozig’s hand, the tiny nickel-plated revolver producing its little puff of smoke. “Halt! Halt!” the trench coats are bellowing. The pistols in their hands are much bigger. When they discharge, Kozig shudders and drops to one knee. And that’s when Franz moves. He seizes one of the trench coats from behind with his bearlike arms. All it takes is a twist of the neck and the man dangles in his grip. One of the big guns is now in Franz’s fist. He fires twice. The second trench coat crumples, but not before discharging a final round. The cap flies from Franz’s head with a splatter of red, and the big man drops like a felled tree. Sigrid’s mind is swirling. Noise everywhere. Screaming. Shouting. A whistle blowing. Car horns honking. Someone shouting. She turns to see the scar-faced taxi driver, shoving Kozig into the rear of his cab. “Get in!” he is shouting to her. “Get in!”

KOZIG IS BLEEDING in the rear of the taxi, and gulping breath. “Find the wound and put pressure on it,” the driver orders as he barges the vehicle through the streets. “Put pressure on it or he’ll bleed to death.”

Sigrid is rummaging through Kozig’s clothing. “Where are you shot?” she keeps repeating. “Herr Kozig, where are you shot?” But Kozig only groans. There is so much blood, but finally she discovers the bullet hole drilled into the man’s thigh.

“I found it! It’s in the thigh!”

“Press down on it! Hard! Both hands!” she hears, but when she does, Kozig screams.

“It’s hurting him!”

“Of course it’s hurting him. He’s got a goddamned bullet in his leg. It must have chipped an artery. You’ve got stop the bleeding or he’s dead.”

She forces herself to ignore Kozig’s pain, and does as commanded, but blood is oozing through her fingers. “It’s not helping. He’s still bleeding.”

“You’ll have to make a tourniquet. Use your scarf!” the taxi driver yells over his shoulder to her. “Tie it tightly around his leg above the wound. Tightly! So it cuts off the flow.”

Kozig gnashes his teeth against the agony as Sigrid follows the taxi driver’s direction, but instead of her scarf, she has removed the silly bandage wrapped around the man’s head. The back of the cab is pungent with the odor of blood. Everything is drenched red. But she manages to knot the bandage, tight, around the man’s thigh. “Done!” she shouts.

“Now pressure again.”

Sigrid clamps her hands back down over the wound, but this time Herr Kozig’s reaction is less sharp. More internalized. “Where are you driving?” she calls to the cabbie.

“There’s a doctor. Not far from here. We’ve used him before.”

“He said,” Sigrid begins. “He said that Franz was working for the Gestapo. That’s why he broke.”

“Well, he was right. Franz was working for the Gestapo.”

“What?”

“His trucking business. He cleaned out the flats of Jews who’d been taken for transport to the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. He was always looking for strong backs, so I’d help him when I wasn’t in the cab.” He hits the horn, cursing at another driver. “I know it may sound ghoulish,” he admits, “but we made money. Money for food, for ration cards, for bribes. Clothes for our U-boats.”

“Well, if that’s so, then tell me why was the Gestapo waiting for us with guns?”

This question the driver cannot answer. “I don’t know,” he admits. “Franz was having troubles. Money troubles. His wife is very sick. In a sanatorium that costs plenty. Maybe,” he starts to say, but doesn’t finish the sentence. “I don’t know.”

Herr Kozig gurgles. Attempting to speak. “Don’t talk,” Sigrid tells him, but he keeps trying to reach into his coat. Finally she bends her ear to his mouth. “In my pocket,” he whispers. “Coat pocket. Please.”

“Herr Kozig, I can’t. I can’t let the pressure off your wound.”

His face is bleaching white. His mouth works. His eyes trail away for a moment and then focus on something only he can see. He starts to whisper. Something foreign to Sigrid’s ear. Something ancient. “Shema… Yisrael…”

“Not much farther!” the taxi man shouts as he wings around a turn and bumps into an alleyway. The bump jolts Sigrid enough that she loses her perch, and by the time she regains herself and presses back down on the wound, something has changed. Herr Kozig’s stare has gone still as stone.

The cab jerks to a halt. “We’re here,” yells the driver. He leaps from behind the wheel, and hammers on a rear door of one of the buildings. A stout matron answers, and he argues with her. But Sigrid is looking at Herr Kozig’s face. His mouth is hanging open. His teeth are stained brown. An eyelid has drooped so that only the white shows. The other eye no longer absorbs light. She reaches into the inside of his coat with her bloodstained fingers and removes a small folded photograph with scalloped edges. The crease down the center divides him from the two children. Herr Kozig, well fed in a tailored suit and spats, trimly barbered, posing by a garden wall. The children plump and smiling, a bow in the girl’s hair, the little boy in lederhosen. She gazes at the image, then returns it to the dead man’s pocket, just as the cabdriver yanks open the rear door.

“No point,” Sigrid informs him bleakly. “There’s no point.”

THERE IS A SINK outside of the doctor’s surgery, with a deep basin and a goose-necked spout. Sigrid has stripped down to her slip. The rest of her clothing is stained crimson. The water from the spout is hot, the lye soap burning and abrasive. It feels good. As she scrubs away the blood it feels as if she is scrubbing off her old skin. She can hear the taxi driver arguing again, this time with the doctor. But she can’t make out the words until the door pops opens and the matron enters.

“I cannot help you. I am not an undertaker.”

“So what am I to do with him? Dump him in the Landwehr when nobody’s looking?”

“If that’s what you decide. It’s really none of my affair. I treat only the living.”

The door shuts. The nurse is an obese, unsmiling woman, with an expression as stiff as her starched apron. “I am to bring you these,” she announces, and plops a bundle of clothing with a paper sack on a laminated tabletop. “They won’t fit,” she informs Sigrid with stern satisfaction, “but it’s better than walking the streets half naked. The contents of your pockets you will find in the sack. You should change behind the screen.”

“Thank you,” Sigrid tell her, and the woman grunts. “And my clothing?”

“Into the incinerator,” the matron says, frowning. “The Herr Doktor is not running a laundry service.” With that, she exits, thumping the door shut.

Sigrid opens her bag. Everything looks in order. She opens the envelope of photographs and meets Kozig in his postal uniform, his camera stare unblinking. Then thumbs through the rest. All there. Behind the screen she changes into the clothes. They are very baggy, but she covers them with a putty-colored raincoat and binds the belt tightly. She turbans her hair with a blue flannel scarf like factory women do. There is a rectangular mirror hanging on the wall above a chair, and the reflection it displays is of an anonymous Berliner Frau. There’s a knock, and the taxi man sticks his head in.

“You are decent?”

“Come in,” Sigrid tells him.

“Good. You have replacement clothes,” he says, his face drawn, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m going to have to dispose of the body. The bastard doctor won’t help me, not even for cash.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. I covered him with a blanket and parked the taxi behind the building. But it can’t stay there long, it’ll draw too much attention.”

“I’ll help you.”

“No. No, the Fräulein would have my nuts if she knew I put you in further danger.” He says this with a kind of smile.

“The Fräulein?’

“You know the one I mean. Skinny as a stick, with eyes like Judgment Day. Besides, you have your own work cut out for you.”

“Yes. The photographs,” Sigrid says.

The man tugs on his cap. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save him.”

Sigrid nods blankly, thinking of those two plump children. “Yes.”

“And too bad about Franz. He was always a very good source for very bad cigars,” the fellow laments, but only briefly. “Well. I shall say good-bye, gnädige Frau. And wish you the best,” he says, shaking her hand.

“Good-bye,” she answers. “I don’t know your name.”

“Call me Rudi.”

“Then good-bye, Rudi. Thank you. You probably saved my life.”

“No. Thank Franz. He’s the one who saved you,” Rudi says, and turns to go. But Sigrid stops him. “I have to ask you,” she says. “The Grosse Hamburger Strasse.”

Rudi’s expression dims.

“When you went there, did you ever deal with a man named”—and she must dig out from her memory the name of the Gestapo man whom the Russian claimed ran the Search Service—“with a man named Dirkweiler?”

“Dirkweiler?” Almost a smile, but not a nice one. “Oh, yes. A genuine hangman. Doesn’t have shit for brains. Why? You have an interest?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she asks, “Do you also know of a man called Grizmek?”

And now the smile gains a trace of bitterness. “Sure. He was a catcher,” Rudi replies. “And if you know his name, then you know what that means.”

“You say he was?”

“He was until he escaped.” Rudi shrugs. “Grizmek was privileged.”

“Privileged.” The same word the Russian has used.

“Because he was so talented at what he did. Plenty of tobacco, plenty of food. Dirkweiler had started rewarding him with nice clothes, silk ties, watches, even cash. All confiscated from the Jews he was netting,” Rudi points out. “He was partnered with this tasty redhead named Freya. A sweet piece of pie, if you’ll pardon me. Together they were quite a successful couple. But then something happened. The last time Franz and I arrived with the lorry, the whole operation was in an uproar, and Dirkweiler was through the roof. Grizmek had vanished along with a sack full of diamonds from the safe. Not only that, but he had stuck a knife into his Gestapo handler. Killed him while they were on the U-Bahn, and then just stepped off at the next stop.” He says this, and then gazes thickly at Sigrid. “That’s all I know. Does it answer your question?”

Sigrid swallows. She picks up her handbag from where she has left it under a chair. She’d given Ericha all the money from the diamond sale, but there was still the envelope from Fräulein von Hohenhoff. She opens its flap and removes half of its contents. “Here. Take this,” she tells Rudi. “This is three hundred marks.”

“Well. That’s impressive,” Rudi observes.

“Maybe you can give it to Franz’s wife. Or just use it as you see fit.”

Stuffing the money into his pocket, he tells her, “Good luck to you, gnädige Frau,” and climbs behind the wheel of his cab.

“Wait,” Sigrid calls. “Rudi. One more thing.”

Rudi looks up from the steering wheel. She had never noticed before the kindness in the man’s eyes that the scar tended to mask.

“If I need to. I mean to say, if it’s essential. Is there a way that I can contact you?”

“Not directly,” Rudi says. “But if it’s essential, you can always get in touch through the blind man.”

“The blind man,” Sigrid repeats.

“Zoo Bahnhof, under the clock. You’ll find him there every afternoon, rain or shine.”

THAT NIGHT, she takes a long soak in the bathtub. As hot as she can make it. As hot as she can stand. Her mother-in-law bangs on the door, complaining, “Are you drowned in there?” but Sigrid ignores her. In a little while, music from the wireless floats by. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. She can recall her mother playing Mozart on her phonograph on a Sunday afternoon. Those pearly notes rippling through the piano’s harp, and sweetening the air with its placid melancholy.

Sigrid closes her eyes, opens herself to the music, and lets herself drown in the memory of something exquisite.