City of Shadows (59 page)

Schmidt didn’t know it anymore.

He spotted a gap that would let them double back, but it meant go
ing along the front of the crowd. He handed Busse’s swastika pennant to Esther. “Wave that.”

“No.”

So he waved it instead, pulling Esther behind him, running, stooped, along the space between the crowd and the police lining the route, making for the gap. He thought he glimpsed Willi Ritte and that Willi glimpsed him, but it could have been someone else.

They were nearly back where they’d started. They took a side road, aiming for Königrätzstrasse. Above them a great penumbra of light ris
ing from the procession was diffused against the night sky, as if reflect
ing a burning pine forest on the march.

Esther was limping, and he put his arm around her shoulder to help her along, waving his swastika in time to the beat of “Watch on the Rhine” coming over the rooftops, hoping like hell they looked like a happy couple on their way home after a good Nazi night out.

Up ahead was Berlin’s biggest hotel, the Excelsior, opposite the An-halter, Berlin’s biggest railway station. Kings and foreign dignitaries had used both in their time, but Schmidt was aiming for a remem
bered greasy café in a side alley used by track workers, a place that once had served Stettin beer and possibly the best pork knuckles and sauerkraut in Berlin.

A wireless on the counter was relaying the commentary on the pa
rade. Some men playing cards looked up as they came in, then went back to their game. The only other customer was either asleep or un
conscious.

Schmidt helped Esther to a corner table and sat down opposite her. “Made my first arrest here,” he told her. “Fellow who’d beaten up his aunt for her pension.”

She tried to nod. Her eyes were closed.

He said, “You can go to pieces now. We’ve got time to spare.”

She shook her head. “Too tired.” She said, “You know what was the worst thing? He didn’t say anything. Günsche. He never spoke a word from the time he came into the flat, not on the journey to the forest, no word. I knew he was going to kill us, but the silence . . . It was like be
ing in the jaws of an animal. As if he were . . . just death.”

Schmidt had very nearly asked, “Who?” Günsche was the past; they were in the jaws of a bigger animal now.

“I’d thought of him as a sort of beast,” she said, “waiting in the
shadows and killing us one by one, and now he’ll always be that. ...Inexplicable. Not human.”

“Yes he was,” Schmidt said. “He was a pox-ridden, nine-pfennig whore bastard.”

Her eyes went wide with surprise and relief, and she began to laugh. “I do love you, Schmidt.”

A voice from the other side of the room said, “You ordering or not? No waiter service here, you know.”

“Merely charm,” Schmidt said. He got up and crossed to the counter. Either the man he remembered behind it hadn’t aged or this was his son—same anchor tattoos on his forearms, same dirty apron, same bad temper. Schmidt had a giddying sense of déjà vu that might have been sheer, blind fatigue. He ordered beer for them both, knuck
les with sauerkraut and potatoes for himself, herring and sauerkraut and potatoes for Esther. It was a long time since they’d last eaten; it would be a long time until they ate again.

The food-bespattered wireless on the counter blared out “Hail to Thee, Crowned in Victory.”

The men at the table were arguing over their cards. The drunk hadn’t moved. The café owner was relaying the order through a hatch.

Schmidt reached over and turned the wireless’s volume down low, adjusting the wavelength to a fraction above the AM band.
“. ..a brown coat,”
a dispatcher’s voice was saying.
“The woman has a distinctive scar on her cheek and is wearing a light suede coat with a fur collar and a tight-fitting black hat. Arrest on sight. Use force if necessary.”

The café owner turned around. Schmidt flicked the knob back to the state radio band.

“Policemen,” the café owner said, and spit. “Smell ’em even when they’re off duty.”

Schmidt went back to Esther and sat down.

She’d been watching. She said, “Are they broadcasting our descrip
tion?” She had a hand to her cheek.

“It’s all right,” he said. “The scarf hides it. And you’ve changed your coat.”

She said dully, “We’re not going to get away, are we?”

“Yes we are. When we’ve eaten, we’re going to walk into Anhalter and I’m going to buy us a pair of tickets for the Munich express. Nice place, Munich, Hitler country, but he won’t be expecting us. Where do you want to go? Switzerland? America? England?”

“They’ll stop us at the frontier,” she said.

“No they won’t. When we get to Munich, we’re going to buy our
selves— Have you got money with you, incidentally?”

She nodded and patted her handbag. “I’d drawn out nearly every
thing in my account in case Anna should want it. I’ve left her some, but tonight, when I was packing, I decided we’d need a larger amount than she would.”

“Good. Well, we’re going to buy some nice warm clothes and walking boots, and we’re going to take a nice long bus ride into the mountains, and we’re going to cross over into Austria by a track I know.”

He and Hannelore had walked it once, from the last inn in Ger
many over the border to the first inn in Austria, not a frontier guard in sight.

But that had been in summer, he thought.

“With every policeman in the country looking for a man accompa
nied by a woman with a scar on her cheek,” she said. “I’m not going to do it to you, Schmidt. We’ll go separately.”

“We go together,” he said.

She was looking toward the café window, its glass almost obliter
ated by advertising stickers, and he knew she was seeing beyond it to the ticket inspectors, the railway police, the wanted posters—
have you seen this couple
?—the hundred identity checkpoints of a new Germany.

Two steins of beer were slammed on the table, two steaming, aro
matic plates shoved in front of them. She didn’t notice.

No point, he wanted to tell her. No point to life without you. He said, “Esther.” He tapped her hand to get her attention. “Mrs. Noah.”

“What?” She picked up her knife and fork.

“And still they come.”
The commentator’s voice was hoarse.
“The flower of Germany, marching into a glorious future.”

“About Anna.” Now that he’d got to it, he wasn’t sure what to say. “In
the forest, when she was ...About the executions ...the House of

Special Purpose.”

Esther cut into a herring. “She was amazing, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she was. How did she know?”

“Know what? This is nice herring. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

“Know about the House of Special Purpose. Busse was right; we were hearing what happened. She couldn’t have made that up.”

Esther sighed. “I suppose not.”

“So either she is Anastasia or somebody else got out of that cellar and told her.”

“I suppose so,” she said; her voice was very tired.

“About the bullets hitting the jewels in her bodice and making scars—
has
she got scars on her body like that?”

“No.”

“But you have.”

“Yes.”

“
You
told her.”

“Yes.” She put down her fork as if her hands needed to be free for this.

He’d known. Part of his mind not occupied with other things had known ever since the forest; it had been waiting for him. What would he feel? Now he didn’t know what he felt. Yes he did—he was angry. Not much, he was too fucking tired, but ...angry.

“And you wouldn’t tell me,” he said.

“I had to do it,” she said dully. “Hitler was taking her up. I didn’t want her trying to fool Hitler. She had to be the real thing. I thought I might be saving her life. As it turned out, she saved mine.” She put out a hand to lay it on one of his. “And then you came along and saved both of us. How did you know where we were?”

He ignored it. “Which one are you? There were six women in that cellar. You’re too young to be the maid or the czarina—or Olga. So which of them are you? Marie? Tatiana? Anastasia?”

“Anastasia,” she said.

The men were putting away the cards and calling for the bill. The drunk at the other table raised his head, said, “More beer,” and col
lapsed again.

After a while Schmidt asked, “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him square in the face. “Maybe, one day. But Anastasia’s dead. She died in that cellar.”

All at once she was baring her teeth like a dog. “You want to know? All right, if you want to know, Anastasia saw her mother try to make the sign of the cross as they opened fire and then drop. Just drop. She didn’t see her sisters die, any of the others, she only saw Demidova scuttling— she was
scuttling,
bullets everywhere and feathers and men going after her with bayonets. Then I was in a corner, my hands like this.” She put her hands over her eyes. He saw her nails digging into her forehead. “The noise ...Jemmy was barking. Demidova screaming. My chest was on fire
.. . .
”

She dropped her hands; her mouth was ugly with pain. “And then it was quiet. Except I heard Alexei whimper ...and then a crack from a rifle butt, and it was quiet again. Oh, God.” She was knuckling her forehead. “Oh, God.”

He gripped her hands while she fought it.

Her scarf had fallen back, and the scar was livid against whiter skin. The men at the other table were looking in their direction. She didn’t see them. She said, “Anastasia died in that cellar. What survived, how it survived . . .” She tried to smile. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

He wasn’t angry anymore. “What survived was one hell of a woman,” he said. He leaned over and rearranged the scarf, not to hide her face but so that he could touch it.

“A different woman anyway,” she said. “Christ, I’m so tired.”

Schmidt snapped his fingers toward the counter. “Brandy,” he said.

“Brandy?”
Now everybody was looking at them, the owner, the men. Even the drunk had opened his eyes.

“Schnapps, then.” God, he thought, we should have taken out an ad
vertisement and a brass band. He made her drink.

“Telling Anna . . .” she said. “It near killed me. I’d learned not to re
live it. Matter of survival.”

Yes, he thought, resurrecting that memory to give to someone else— one of the great acts of generosity.

“We are seeing the triumph of the will of one man, our leader, Adolf Hitler!”
screamed the commentator.

“And the Gypsies?” he asked.

“We had to say Gypsies; it fitted in with Anna’s Franziska past. She believes it anyway. But there weren’t any Gypsies. There wasn’t any
thing, nothing I remember, except hurting. Until Rosa.”

“So that was true.”

“Rosa is true,” Esther said. “Except she’s unbelievable. This injured thing rolled off a cart at her feet one day, another bit of detritus from the civil war. I’d been raped, there was the great gash in my face. Sometimes I think she suspected who I was, but if she did, it made no difference to her. We’d persecuted her people, refused them education. We sent sol
diers against them, encouraged pogroms
.. . .
”

We,
he thought.

“But Rosa had seen so much death she just liked things to be alive. When the Cossacks came, she hid me as if I’d been her own. I became a Jew because of Rosa. All those adopted children we’ll have, they’re going to be Jews. For Rosa. If the Nazis catch me, I’ll shout in their faces, ‘I’m a Jew and proud of it.’ For Rosa.” She attempted another smile. “We of the House of Romanov owe her that.”

Gently, he put the fork back in her hand. “Eat,” he said.

She looked at her fork, then at her plate, and began eating again. With her mouth full, she said, “Does it make a difference?”

“Does what make a difference?”

“Ekaterinburg. Me.”

“No, no,” he said. “I just like to know who I’m on the run with, that’s all.”

The color was back in her face now. “I expect I’d have told you even
tually,” she said.

“Good, that’s good.”

“I don’t think about it,” she said, “nor the life before that. We walked in a dream, we girls, folded in love. So loved, we were, so loving. So happy, so untroubled, apart from Alexei’s illness.” Her voice was matter-of-fact now, but her fist clenched on her fork. “That’s why we can’t have children, you and I. It’s carried by the female line, a legacy from Great-Grandmama.”

Hemophilia. He’d once heard it said that if it hadn’t been for the czarevitch’s hemophilia, the czarina wouldn’t have turned to Rasputin,
who could ease some of her son’s pain. No Rasputin, no revolution. A