City of Women

SEVEN

“THEY’RE CALLED U-BOATS,” Ericha tells her. Those in hiding. “Submarines,” because they are submerged, and must run silently to avoid detection and destruction.

A teenage girl and her little brother are the latest guests to arrive at the pension. The girl has not removed the Judenstern, sewn, yellow and black, onto her coat. Ericha helps her with a penknife, cutting the threads with concentration. The next day, Sigrid uses her last blue ration coupon to purchase a quart of skim milk for them, which she hides on the outside windowsill of her bedroom, where her mother-in-law is unlikely to find it. But when she brings it to the pension, the brother and sister are gone. She doesn’t ask questions, though the questions are bursting inside her. Where did they go? Who were they? Where were their parents? But Sigrid keeps her mouth closed. The milk goes to a pair of middle-aged women instead, who quote Shakespeare to each other as if quoting from the Bible.

But at night, lying in her bed, Sigrid cannot help but fill in the blank spots. She imagines the teenage girl sneaking a glance at the boys in her school, perhaps, stealing a drag from her father’s cigarette. Imagines the girl’s little brother kicking a ball down a cobbled street beside a canal. Chalking his games on the sidewalk. But these normal lives, which she conjures for the U-boats, are her secret. Her secret war against her own fear. It helps to steady her. Helps to stop her from dropping things. A bowl, a file of papers, her comb as she looks blankly at the reflection in the mirror, and suddenly loses strength in her fingers, as if she has had to divert it elsewhere. To some interior spot of resistance.

That’s the way it is at first. Hiding people is much more draining. Much more terrifying than the games she played with Egon’s black-market exchanges. She sometimes thinks she may blurt something out at the office that will give them all away. Worries that she brings home the smell of their fear to her mother-in-law’s flat. She wakes in a silent panic one night, and is compelled to peer into the wardrobe to see if she has actually stashed a U-boat there, or if it was simply a dream.

But after a month, something begins to ease. She begins to make pathways in her head to accommodate the Pension Unsagbar. Auntie begins to call her Frau Blondi, because it has become necessary for her to have a name. After more than a month, a kind of machinery begins to take over. Her muscles grow used to the routine of breaking the law. She stops dropping her fountain pen, and has quit allowing dishes to slip from her fingers. She finds a small closet in her head, in which she can shut away the fear of hiding an attic full of contraband people from the Gestapo, and begins to mimic her old, bland addiction to routine.

Meanwhile, the machinery works. U-boats in, U-boats out, passed to one anonymous contact after the other. The parcels of black-market goods handed off at cafés or on U-Bahn platforms. Cigarettes, hard sausage, food coupons, powdered eggs, the currency of underground survival. Unnamed faces, fearful glances, anger and disbelief and grateful tears. All part of the procedure of daily life.

Ericha approves. “You’re not such a hausfrau any longer,” she informs Sigrid with satisfaction.

“Is that a compliment?”

No answer to that question. “I need you to do something for me,” she says instead. “But it could be dangerous.”

“You mean more dangerous?”

“Yes,” Ericha agrees. “That’s what I mean.”

“Well, what is it?”

The girl expels smoke from a bitter-smelling cigarette. “A pickup.”

TAKING A STEP back when the bus grinds up to the curb, Sigrid adjusts the copy of the B.Z. midday folded in a rectangle under her arm. When the passengers climb down, she watches their faces anxiously. What should she be looking for? A spark of fear? Defiance? Anticipation? Or simply the blankness of habitual suffering?

She realizes, to her own embarrassment, that she is also observing features. Noses with a hook? An Oriental shadow to the eyes? How he would laugh at her for that, she thinks. Of course, my dear little shiksele. Look for the kosher snout.

The last passengers disembark, and the Berliners crowding the curb pile aboard. She feels a twinge of panic. This is the third bus that has arrived without results. Has she missed them? Is she waiting at the wrong stop? Has something gone wrong?

She looks at her wristwatch. Not much time left before she is due back at the patent office. Can she wait another three minutes? Another two? How long until someone notices that she has not boarded a single bus? How long before she starts to stand out? She glances at the old man at the news kiosk, filling his pipe. Had she caught him watching her? But then she sees a woman approaching the stop with her two little girls in tow. There is nothing overtly distinguishing about them. The woman is probably around Sigrid’s age, wrapped in a heavy, shapeless wool coat with a felt hat. They have no suitcases, no bags, they have simply themselves. And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why Sigrid is suddenly sure that she has been waiting at the right spot, after all. The children are hurrying to keep pace with their mother. The woman grips their little hands as if they are her luggage to carry. Not as a burden but as the only possessions of value she has left to her.

Sigrid gazes until she feels the woman’s eyes lock onto hers, then she steps forward and changes the newspaper she is holding from her right arm to her left. That is the signal, which answers the guarded question darkening the woman’s eyes.

“Excuse me, can you tell me the way to the zoo?” the woman asks, her voice controlled, but her face bleached by the effort.

“Yes,” Sigrid answers as trained. “It’s not far. I’ll walk with you there.”

“I’m sorry,” the woman whispers thickly. “I was afraid to take the bus.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I was afraid I would see someone I knew.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sigrid repeats. “You’re in friendly hands now. But we must move quickly.”

The U-Bahn carriage rocks with the rigor of the steel rails. Its dim thunder covers them like a blanket, covering any need for conversation. The woman sits with the older girl beside her and the younger on her lap. The children have frothy curls and deep brown eyes. Faces like hearts. The older sits in quiet imitation of her mother’s self-possession. The younger rests her head on her mother’s shoulder, and carries a small wooden tiger, with most of the stripes worn off. When required, the woman gives them brave smiles. Sigrid observes covertly, as if watching some small, inexplicable ritual: a mother and her children. Then looks away and absorbs the high-pitched keening of steel at the turns. The carriage bumping. Exhausted faces across the aisle colored by the low-wattage light. A poster featuring a German mother with her towheaded Kinder as she tucks a baby into its crib. German women who are child-rich show the same dedication of body and life as the frontline soldier in the thunder of battle. Protect the children, it commands, the most valuable possession of our Volk!

She does not take them to Auntie’s pension. Only to the coffee bar inside the Bahnhof Zoo, where she seats them at a table and heads back outside to the street. The blind man’s there, at his post under the bahnhof clock, and she drops a few groschen into his cup, as planned.

“Bless you,” he rasps. Black goggles as dead as night.

“They’re inside,” she tells him.

“Yes. That’s good. You should take a pencil.”

“I should what?”

“You’ve done your job. Take a pencil and go about your business.”

“You mean I’m to leave them there alone?”

“They are not alone, gnädige Frau,” he says, “and neither are you. Now take a pencil and go.”

THAT EVENING SHE FLEES to the cinema after supper. The back row of the mezzanine smells of floor mop solution. The newsreel features footage of American soldiers taken prisoners by the Afrika Korps in the Kasserine Pass. The narrator contemptuously describes the American troops as mongrels. But Sigrid finds the faces of the young men heartbreaking. With sand in their hair and sticking to their skin, they stare into the camera like motherless children. She has taken to listening to the forbidden broadcasts while her mother-in-law is at her kaffeeklatsch, hunching by the radio in the standard position, with her ear pressed to the speaker. According to the BBC, the British have hounded the panzer armies in North Africa across Libya to the border of Tunisia. Of the war in the East, they say that, in the face of continued Red Army assaults, Ninth Army has evacuated positions south of Moscow near the city of Rzhev.

On the cinema screen, a squad of panzer grenadiers grin for the camera as they ride the turret of a Mark IV tank across a frozen white field. She allows herself a moment to imagine Kaspar’s face. She pictures him now gaunt and unshaven. His helmet crooked, frosted white, like those of the men in the newsreel. Only without the smile for the camera. Instead, she draws a mild frown of appraisal on his lips.

And suddenly Ericha is beside her.

“Good evening, Frau Schröder.”

Sigrid blinks. “You’re late, I was afraid something had happened.”

“Something did happen. But I’m fine.”

“You’re not going to tell me what, I suppose?”

Ericha confirms this by ignoring the question. “You did well today,” she tells Sigrid. “Thank you.”

Sigrid shrugs. Shakes her head as she stares up at the screen. “No thanks are required. I was anxious as a cat.”

“Still. You did what was needed. Our cargo was safely delivered.”

“Cargo? Is this how we must speak now?” she asks.

“I can’t stay long.”

“I thought you would be coming back with me.”

“No. Something came up.”

“Something happened, something came up.” Sigrid frowns with frustration.

“I’ve left a wrapped parcel in the laundry room. There’s a loose brick by the wringer. You’ll see it. I scratched it with a pfennig.”

“Scratched it?”

“I need you to pick it up and bring it to Auntie’s tomorrow night. I’ll meet you there at half past seven.”

“And if there’s a bombing raid?”

“Then the night after. Or the night after that.” Ericha starts to stand, but then doesn’t. “So how did it feel?”

“Feel?”

“You know what I mean. How did if feel to act?”

“It felt terrifying,” Sigrid answers. “I felt like I was testing fate at every step.”

The girl almost smiles. “Good. That’s how you’re supposed to feel. It’s what keeps us out of the dungeons in the bottom of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.”

HER MOTHER-IN-LAW has begun to interrogate her about her whereabouts. Going to a picture show? you say. What’s it called? Who’s in it? What’s it about? All questions designed to trip her up; to expose her in some way. Obviously the old woman suspects something, though exactly what, it’s difficult to say. Some kind of unsavory behavior. So Sigrid has launched a counteroffensive. She’s begun babbling at length over dinner, about this film and that. About how gifted is Zarah Leander, how lovely is Ilse Werner, how hilarious is poor Heinz Rühmann, how stern is Otto Gebühr, his face chiseled from a slab. In order to keep the plots straight for these films she never actually watches, she has begun memorizing the extracts in the back of Kino magazines, which she buys, dog-ears, and then leaves about the flat as proof of her cinematic devotion. Finally her mother-in-law gives up a groan. “Enough, enough. If I was so interested in such nonsense, I’d be wasting money as well at the ticket booth. But enough, please.” She surrenders.

That night, when Sigrid returns from the Pension Unsagbar, the old lady does not question her.

Emboldened, the next night Sigrid gathers a quarter stick of chemical stretch butter and two tins of powdered milk from her mother-in-law’s pantry, and totes them in her shopping sack to Auntie’s, along with a head of brownish cabbage and two greasy fish fillets from Hörsig’s, which Auntie fries up in a skillet and carves up into bites, as the cats go mad at her feet. But the cats are out of luck. At this point there are half a dozen people in the Pension Unsagbar to consume the feast. A scrawny middle-aged man with a large black mole on his face who habitually cracks his knuckles and wonders aloud what time it is. Of course, no one in the Pension Unsagbar owns a watch any longer. Watches have been sold long ago. Then there is a young husband and wife with three boys and an old grandpa, whom they all call “Opa.” The husband and wife are so desperately grateful for her help. “To keep the children fed, you understand,” the husband repeats over and over. But the children themselves eat quickly and covertly, as if they fear that the bites of fish and the few chunks of dried fruit may be stolen from their hands. The grandpa just stares backward at a world that no longer exists, or forward at a world beyond his comprehension. When Sigrid offers him a slice of bread with some gelatin spread, he blinks his watery pink eyes and waves it off, saying only, “For the young people.”

Ericha touches her on the shoulder. “It’s time,” she tells her.

At the door, Sigrid gazes at her fretfully. “Where are they?”

“They?”

“The woman and her two girls. Where are they? Were they caught?” She asks the questions from the back of her throat, as if she would rather swallow the words than speak them.

“You liked them, did you?”

“I just expected to see them here.”

“Don’t worry. They’re safe enough. Auntie’s is not the only place we use. There are others willing to lend us a room or a bed or an attic for a night or two when necessary. I had to move them to accommodate this lot we just took in.”

“So they won’t be coming back?”

“That all depends on how things work out,” Ericha tells her. And then she says, buttoning her coat, “I’d be careful, if I were you.”

“Careful of what?”

“Careful of your emotions. You can’t afford to form attachments.”

Going down the steps of the stairwell to the street level, Sigrid catches a shadow of a glance. “What?” she inquires.

“Nothing,” says Ericha.

“No, you gave me a look. What is it?”

“It’s nothing. Only sometimes I wonder about your motives.”

“My motives? What on earth do you mean by that?”

“I mean you’re getting older.”

“Why, thank you, little one. How kind of you to note that.”

“Well, you are. You must be close to thirty by now, and without any children. Perhaps you need to be a mother, even if it’s only to strangers.”

“And perhaps you need to concentrate less on nonsense. You’re so smart that you think yourself into knots. Besides. Just ask anyone. I haven’t a germ of maternal instinct. So no more theories, please.”

“You never talk about your husband,” Ericha says.

Sigrid swallows sharply. “I do.”

“No. You don’t. Other women talk about their husbands constantly. So it makes me curious that you don’t.”

“I suppose I am not ‘other women.’ What’s private to me is private.”

Ericha gives a drilling look. Then turns away, and unlocks the door that leads to the street. “I’m sorry. I won’t ask again. Did you bring the parcel?”

Sigrid looks back blankly. “Did I?”

“From the laundry room.”

“Oh. Yes. Remind me to give you a groschen for the next time. I had the devil’s own time finding your penny scratch.” She reaches into her coat pocket, and retrieves a parcel in brown paper. “What is it?”

Ericha unties the twine as her answer. Then pushes aside the brown paper to reveal a stack of worn and crinkled bank notes of varied denominations that have been passed, well used, from hand to hand. “A withdrawal from our bank,” she says.

Sigrid stares in the pale wattage of the stairwell bulb. “Where did this come from?”

“People who make donations to us rather than Winter Relief.”

“There must be close to three hundred marks here.”

Ericha does not respond to this. Instead, she says, “You should have a key.”

“What?”

“A key to Auntie’s door.”

“And I’m sure your Auntie would be less than pleased at that idea.”

“Don’t misjudge her just because she can be thorny. It’s her way. Believe me, if she didn’t find you trustworthy, she wouldn’t be letting you past the landing,” Ericha tells her.

“Is this a test?”

“No.”

“Is this your way of measuring my commitment?”

“No. It’s not a test.”

“It is, because with Ericha Kohl, everything is a test.”

Ericha shakes her head. “Never mind. If you don’t want the responsibility, then you don’t.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say one thing or the other.”

“Fine. If you give me a key, I will take a key.”

Ericha reties the parcel of bills.

“What’s it for?” Sigrid asks.

“A bribe. An important document.” After tightening her knot on the parcel, the girl replaces it in Sigrid’s handbag.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving it back to you. You’ll need it. Our contact will be waiting for you in the cinema tonight at quarter past seven. Rear mezzanine.”

If we were mobsters in Chicago, you’d be called my bagman.

“I’m not sure I wish to do this,” Sigrid says.

“Maybe not. But you’ll do it anyway,” Ericha tells her confidently.

“Oh, you think so?”

“Yes. Because it’s a test. And you can’t resist passing tests.”

Sigrid frowns. “Why can’t you do it?”

“Because the man you’ll be meeting knows me. I was in the BdM with his daughter.”

“His daughter?”

“His brainless daughter. I bloodied her nose.”

“I won’t ask why.”

“So, you’ll do it.”

Sigrid takes in a sharp breath. “My God, I’m going to be late getting back to work.”

“So, you’ll do it,” Ericha repeats.

“Yes, yes, I’ll do it,” she squawks. “Now, open the door,” Sigrid commands. “Quickly.”

SHE IS ONLY a few seconds short of returning late to the patent office. Fräulein Kretchmar gazes at her, as she quickly removes the cover of her typewriter. The woman’s mouth opens, as if she might speak, but then she doesn’t. Sigrid breathes in, then breathes out.

Coming home at the end of the day, she finds her mother-in-law down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor, plunging a stiff-bristled brush into a pail of dirty water with a sickly-sweet odor.

“My God.” Sigrid frowns. “What is that smell?”

“Pine needles,” the old woman replies, slapping the brush onto the floor. “Stewed pine needles. It was on one of my radio programs.”

“Well, at least it’s not the soup. Have you put it on yet?”

“Just now. Watch where you’re stepping, will you? If you leave footprints, you’ll have to clean them. Not I.”

Sigrid enters the kitchen. Lifts the lid on the soup pot, sniffs the contents, then replaces it. No meat. A little over half a kilo per week per person permitted by their allotted ration Marken does not allow for many meaty soups. But she can smell the aroma of cigarette tobacco. And not the odorous ersatz brands, either, but the real thing. Renate’s gift. She considers mentioning it, just to wheedle, when the old lady suddenly announces, “Your new friend stopped by.”

She steps out of the kitchen. “Friend?”

“The Frau Obersturmführer Junger,” her mother pronounces archly. “She asked if you could come at two on Sunday, rather than one.” A pointed glance out of the corner of her eye as she scrubs. “I told her you’d be delighted.”

After supper, she informs Mother Schröder that she is going to the cinema as she walks out, closing the door behind her before any argument can slow her down. She clatters down the steps, listening to the noise of her flat-heeled shoes on the worn wooden planks, and bursts out the door as the twilight glooms the streets. The air is stiff with cold, but she breathes it in with a mix of relief and trepidation. In her bag is the parcel of banknotes.

She has stolen one of her mother-in-law’s Aristons from the packet, and lights it with a match from a paper box as she walks. The tobacco is so bitter that at first she feels she might retch. She pauses by a poplar tree to overcome her light-headedness, and then forces down another drag. This time the smoke sticks to her throat. Then, as she expels it, she spots the figure in the bleakness.

A man across the street.

It’s not that she recognizes his face. His face is obscured by the down-turned hat brim and the upturned collar. Perhaps it’s his posture that causes her heartbeat to shorten. The slightly dangerous slouch. Hands hidden in his pockets. The tilt of the head. And most of all his stillness. That stillness within him that she could never quite touch.

It’s as if she can feel herself rooting to the spot. She does not move, and neither does he.

The No. 14 Elektrischetram hums up the Uhlandstrasse in the opposite direction, and after it passes, no one is standing across the street. No one at all.

IN THE CINEMA’S BALCONY, Sigrid finds the father of the BdM girl whose nose Ericha bloodied. He’s a nervous bureaucrat, with multiple chins that ripple when he frowns. Opening an envelope, he exhibits the contraband he’s brought to market. In the light from the screen Sigrid can read the title on the cardboard document cover. BOMBENPASS. A passbook for bombing victims. Tensely, she slides him the paper parcel in exchange. The bureaucrat yanks open the parcel wrapping and thumbs through the marks. Then he nods curtly. Transaction completed.

The bureaucrat scurries away, but Sigrid stays. She breathes deeply. The film assaults her ears with music. It rushes sharp gray-white light past her eyes. But she is concentrating on the darkness. Is he out there? Waiting for her? Buried in a row of seats, an escapee from the solitary prison of her memory? She searches the blackness. Waits. But then the house lights are raised. A scattered collection of Berliners, thickly wrapped in coats and scarves, are on their feet, milling toward the exits like somnambulists as the porters herd them down the aisles.

No one buried in the seats. No one waiting. No man. No ghost.

The last time she acted as Egon’s bagman, she was carrying a tin of Malzkaffee in her purse. She was posted in the spot by the stairs as instructed, and was waiting on the skinny Berliner with the homburg once more. But she was looking at her wristwatch, because the man had not yet arrived, and she would soon be late in returning to the office. She tried not to appear anxious or out of place. But then a Sipo agent in a raincoat turned up on the platform, with a uniformed Orpo officer trailing. When the Sipo man started stopping women—women only—and asking for their papers, she felt a burn of nausea in her belly. Her eyes darted back and forth. No sign of the skinny Berliner or his black homburg. Perhaps he had spotted the Sipo men before her. Perhaps he had been tipped off. Perhaps they had already arrested him and were now searching for his accomplice.

A train whooshed into the station. It was headed the wrong direction, but Sigrid turned and stepped onto it anyway. She tried to keep her breathing level. It seemed to take a lifetime for the train to get under way, and when at last it rumbled forward, she had lost sight of the Sipo agent. Had he boarded the train as well? She stood tightly clutching the handrail when someone touched her on the shoulder, and she spun around with sparks in her eyes.

“Excuse me,” a young boy in a Hitler Youth uniform said, obviously startled by her reaction to his touch. “But I thought… I thought you might like to sit down.”

She glared at him, and then glared at the vacant seat he was offering her. “Ah,” she breathed finally. “Thank you.”

Your instincts are good. You made the right decision.

She had clamped the tin of Malzkaffee onto the table that afternoon, and announced to Egon that she was through with being his bagman. “Look at my hands, how they are shaking just talking about it. I could barely get through my work for the rest of the day. I’m sorry, I’m simply not cut out for this, Egon.”

He took her hands in his and settled her onto the bed opposite him. “Don’t worry. Your instincts are good. You made the right decision.”

“Don’t try to charm me.”

“I’m not.”

“I can’t do it any longer. I’m just a hausfrau. That’s all.”

He took a deep breath and expelled it. She knew what he was doing. He was calculating how to handle this. How to handle her. “Let me get you a drink,” he said, and left her slumped on the bed as he headed for the bottle in the cabinet. She picked up his cigarette smoldering in the ashtray and took a puff. Its bitterness bit into the back of her throat.

“Here. Take this.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said, accepting the glass. “I’ll smell of alcohol when I get home.” But she took a swallow anyway, and closed her eyes as the heat flowed down to her belly. He flopped down on the bed, with a jangle of springs, leaning his head against the wall, and picking up his cigarette. “I’ll get someone else,” he said.

She looked over at him. “Will you?”

A shrug. “Of course I will.” And then he looks away from her, examining the rising smoke. “What else can I do?”

When Ericha appears in the cinema seat beside her, she jumps.

“You did it,” the girl whispers.

“What?”

“You did it. You made the exchange.”

“Yes.” Sigrid frowns. “Yes, I did it. A bombing passbook.”

“A blank bombing passbook. We can type any name we like on it.”

“Now all we need is a typewriter.”

“You have a typewriter at your job.”

“I see. So I am to be the secret agent at the Reich Patent Office. I have a typewriter, yes, but I also have a supervisor standing at my back.”

“Never mind, then. There are other typewriters,” Ericha tells her. “You’re upset.”

“No. I just can’t stand to sit here any longer. Please, let’s go.”

The old usher opens the door for them, but also blocks it, clearing his throat with intention. “Evening, gnädige Frauen. Enjoy the film?”

“Give him some money,” Ericha instructs in a whisper. “Ten marks.”

Sigrid obeys, digging the money from her purse.

The old man grunts his thanks and clears the way for them with ersatz gallantry.

“You pay him off?” she asks Ericha as they hurry down the steps.

“Not me. You,” she answers, but then says, “It’s a good spot for transactions. It’s worth a bit of wire to protect,” she says, then asks, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying,” Ericha tells her as they reach the bottom of the steps, but leaves it at that.

The trip back down the Uhlandstrasse is filled with silence. The silence of the images inside Sigrid’s head. His face. The weight of his eyes. The lightness of his fingers on her cheek. But as they enter the building, they are overrun by Frau Granzinger and her brood. “Fräulein! Where have you been?” Granzinger demands. Sigrid sees something in Ericha freeze up, and she is abruptly reminded of the girl’s youth. “I told you, did I not,” Granzinger is blaring, “that I had an appointment tonight?! And look at me! Here I am dragging all these children with me, because you, my duty girl, were nowhere to be found as usual.”

“Frau Granzinger,” Sigrid starts to intercede, but the woman sharply waves off her interruption.

“Please, Frau Schröder. Don’t defend her. I realize you have taken an interest in this muddleheaded thing, and I won’t ask why. But, please, tonight keep your explanations to yourself. Now upstairs. All of you!” she booms at her brood. Then to Ericha she adds with a glower, “And that includes you, Fräulein.” Stuffing her hausfrau’s bag, the size of a serving platter, under her arm, she finishes with Sigrid. “And to you, Frau Schröder. Good night.”

Climbing the stairs to the flat, she discovers Mother Schröder smoking in her chair, listening to the Italian Air Force Orchestra in concert on the Telefunken. The frequency band glows amber. “So. You’ve found your way back again. Lucky me,” the old woman says, and tips back a swallow from her glass. A fruity schnapps is her favorite, but sometimes she resorts to cooking sherry.

“Lucky you, lucky me,” Sigrid replies, and begins to unbutton her coat when the music is suddenly interrupted by a sharp, syncopated beeping.

THE TOMMIES COME, and the raid lasts for just under two hours, though it seems timeless. Never ending. The thunder of the bombing is numbing after a while. Nothing too close, like a chorus of war drums. Granzinger’s children are as difficult as usual, but this time Sigrid has placed herself well away from the source of the tempest. She tries to concentrate on her knitting. It’s a scarf for Kaspar from wool she had wound up after unraveling a ragged sweater. But then another night of theater begins, as the blond Frau Obersturmführer regales the assembled audience with tales of the holy struggle in the East as reported by her husband’s latest Feldpost letter. Across the narrow cellar Ericha drills Sigrid with a stare while clutching one of Granzinger’s squalling bundles, appearing as if she has been chained to the bench like the family dog. “‘Today we’re hunting a gang of Bolshevik killers,’” the pregnant Frau announces stridently. “‘A bloody band of thieves, who’d been murdering Germans to steal their rations bag. We tracked the swine through the snow, but in the end, all we found were their corpses. They had taken the coward’s way out, of course, when they realized we were closing in. All but one. A Jew, ugly as a toadstool, who’d been too cowardly to pull the trigger. My men begged me to allow them to dispatch him on the spot, and I will admit, my darling wife, that I was sorely tempted to permit them to have their way. But I could not. Instead, I reminded them that we Germans are not the murderers in this war, and that we would leave the slaughter of the unarmed to the Jews and Reds. Later on, true to form, the Jew tried to make his escape with a stolen loaf of bread. At that point, I gave the order to fire. He had left us no other choice.’”

Even the Frau Obersturmführer seems to hesitate at this point. She scrutinizes the letter in her hand, with a hint of uncertainty. Then swallows before finishing. “‘Until we are reunited, my darling one, you are, as always, at the center of my soul.’” With a breath, she folds the letter closed. “Heil Hitler,” she offers as the closing benediction.

The cellar has settled into a silence as hard as stone. And then from the stone comes a high-pitched note. It is, in fact, a song. Frau Obersturmführer Junger has started singing, in a girlish soprano, a slightly off-key but nonetheless sweetly insistent rendition of that most sacred Party hymn, the “Horst Wessel Lied.”

Eyes dart about, some of them covertly appalled. Crying is forbidden—and so is singing, the sign should say. They may be thinking that, but they remain too canny to say it, and then there’s Mundt. Portierfrau Mundt, who is canny as well. Canny enough to seize an opportunity. Her voice is like a frog’s, perhaps, but she starts croaking along during the chorus. It’s a signal everyone gets. Soon the song is spreading. Voices gathering into a thick cacophony of National Socialist caterwauling, as tenant after tenant receives the message and jumps in. Mundt searches the ranks with her eyes, looking for laggards. She peers narrowly at Sigrid, but too bad, Sigrid is already singing. She has even beaten her mother-in-law into the fray, who is playing catch-up with some of the lyrics. Sorry to disappoint, you venomous old snake, Sigrid replies inwardly to Mundt, but then looks over at Ericha, and sees to her horror that the girl’s mouth is clamped shut as tightly as a virgin’s knees.

Sing! She telegraphs the command into the girl’s skull. Sing, for God’s sake! And maybe the girl is a mind reader, because, with a frigid glare in Sigrid’s direction, she suddenly opens her mouth and bellows the lyrics.

At the song’s end, there is ruckus of cheers and applause, and arms are tossed up for the inevitable chorus of Heils! Sigrid throws up her arm as well, but her Heil is not nearly so vehement as Ericha’s, who is glaring at her now with a mix of scorn and defiance.

Shortly thereafter the drone of the bombers fade, and the all-clear sounds.

“Ha! We drove those cowardly air gangsters away!” Marta Trotzmüller feels compelled to trumpet. But as quickly as it had surfaced, the room has lost its taste for bravado. Compliments are showered appropriately on the Frau Obersturmführer, of course, and she is catered to on her way up the steps, but beyond that, there’s mostly just grumbling about the lateness of the hour, as all over town, weary Berliners file out of their cellars, and those who still have them lust for their beds.