City of Women (7 page)

Sigrid drops her bags on the sideboard. “Hörsig’s had our number on the board, so I got some carp. Doesn’t look too bad.”

“Still no codfish?”

“No, you’ll have to wait for Army Day for that.”

“Fine,” Mother Schröder responds flatly, distancing herself from the radio as she stands. “I’ll put water on for the potatoes. We should get them prepared,” she announces, crossing into the kitchen, cigarette still poking out from between her lips.

Sigrid slips off her coat and shivers. The flat is chilled. She crosses to the coke stove and dumps a few briquettes into the firebox from the scuttle, taking advantage of the temporary weakness of Mother Schröder’s position. “I met our new neighbor,” she says, picking up the day’s mail. Nothing unusual. An invitation from the German Association of Music Lovers. Something from the Dairy Society of Mark Brandenburg. “Just now,” she says, “on the landing. She’s very young.”

Mother Schröder glares at the coke stove, but makes no protest. Resting her cigarette on the edge of the counter, she frowns as she dumps a few shrunken potatoes into the metal colander. “Yes, and I understand she is with child.” This fact is tossed at Sigrid like a hand grenade tossed by a soldier. “Unless I’ve heard incorrectly,” the old woman adds.

Sigrid swallows and walks over to the sink, opening the hot water tap, though the water still runs cold. “Don’t worry. Your hearing is still good enough for gossip. She’s really quite the ripe little plum.” She plops the fish on the cutting board. Brownish blood has soaked through the newspaper in which it’s been wrapped, and colors Sigrid’s fingers.

“When is she due?” her mother-in-law asks with mock innocence. “Did she mention?”

“She did not, nor did I inquire. All she wanted to know was if Kaspar is at the front.”

Mother Schröder’s face suddenly tenses. “She asked about Kaspar?”

“She asked if my husband is serving on the front line.”

“And what did you tell her?”

Sigrid squints at the intensity of her mother-in-law’s question. “I told her the truth. Why? What should I have told her?”

But Mother Schröder only shakes her head and turns back to the potatoes. “Just watch your words, daughter-in-law,” the old woman warns, scrubbing the potatoes roughly. “The wife of an active-duty officer in the SS. She may look ripe, but that’s the kind of plum that bites back.”

For a moment they are quiet as Mother Schröder dumps the last potato into a bowl. Sigrid removes a knife from the drawer and slices a grayish fillet in half. “So,” she ventures, “what did they have to say?”

Her mother-in-law scowls. “What did
who
have to say?”

“You know who. The radio.”

The old woman looks hunted. She shakes her head. “Nonsense,” she says. “Pure nonsense.”

Sigrid takes a step closer. “Pure nonsense of what sort?”

“The same sort of ridiculous rumors one can hear in the queue at the fishmonger’s,” the old woman says, facing the sink. Then her eyes dart to either side, a reflex so involuntary and commonplace that Berliners have given it a name: the German glance. “They say that the Bolsheviks have launched an offensive against our forces outside of Moscow,” she admits in a low voice, meeting Sigrid’s eyes for only an instant. “But surely it will be repulsed. His generals may have failed him at Stalingrad, but the Führer will not permit such a thing to happen again. We can, I think, be most certain of that.”

•   •   •

T
HAT NIGHT THEY’RE
down in the cellar again, but the Brits have targets in the northern districts in mind. The true purpose of the raid seems to be to establish the young Frau Obersturmführer Junger as the new queen of the block. The rain of bombs is only background music. She beams beatifically at one and all. Shares her bratwurst. Coos at Frau Granzinger’s child and cradles the infant like a Madonna. Even goes so far as to read aloud a portion of a letter from her SS-Obersturmführer husband at the front. “‘My treasured wife,’” she begins
.
“‘You must remember that regardless of how painful our separation may be, at this most sacred time in a woman’s life, that we are fighting to create nothing less than a new world. And that the sacrifices we make at home, as well as here on the field of battle, shrink to triviality when compared with the Führer’s Great Purpose. We fight not for mundane conquest but for the very survival of all that is good and true and pure.’”

By this point Sigrid is praying for a bomb to hit. Fortunately the all-clear sounds before her prayer is answered. The residents gather themselves together and shamble toward the steps with the usual post-raid prattle. “Looks like the Tommies will have to try harder next time; we’re still among the living.” “Who knows? Maybe they ran out of bombs.”
Sigrid notes that Fräulein Kohl has appeared in the cellar tonight, holding the restless little Granzinger infant as if it were a lit bomb while squeezed into the benches. She glares at Sigrid as if this is somehow
her
fault .

•   •   •

I
HAVE SOMETHING
for you.

Her mother-in-law has uncorked a bottle of peach brandy to share with Marta Trotzmüller, but does not bother to invite Sigrid to join them. Just as well. Unlike the harried Frau Granzinger, Marta is of the same generation as her mother-in-law. The Kaiser’s generation. And after a few snorts of brandy, they begin to unravel the spiderweb of their past. Back in days when the Pariser Platz was filled with smartly appointed carriages, and Berlin was the stomping ground for the mustachioed officers of the imperial guard regiment.

Sigrid is sitting in the bedroom in the chair, where Kaspar always draped his trousers at night, putting some greasy cream on her hands and shoulders.

There are letters that she has kept. Recklessly. Foolishly out of some girlish sentiment. They are tied with a silk burgundy-colored ribbon and stashed in a cigarette tin. He would never post them, of course. But he would leave them in her coat pocket, in her bag, to find on the train ride home. Or the next day when she opened her purse before work. Raw, animal scribbling, often dedicated to the torture to which she was subjecting him. His
need
for her, flowing through the ink across the pages. Her culpability in the matter of his brutal sexual despair when they are parted. He calls her a siren. A Lilith. A succubus. But also an Aphrodite. The Angel of his Flesh. Foolish little names that always left her disproportionately senseless. Now and again she removes the letters from the tin and holds them. When she’s alone in the flat or the old woman is passed out, she holds them just to feel their weight, but never reads a word again. She doesn’t need to. They are all printed in fire on the walls of her memory. And all she need do to see his face, to hear is voice, is close her eyes.

I have something for you
, he told her.

“Something?” She tried not to sound hopeful. He had never given her a gift of any kind.

“Yes. Sometimes I write to you when you’re not with me. Sometimes at night,” he said, and reached over to the side table, where he plucked a small envelope from beneath a monstrous volume of Goethe’s
Theory of Colors
.

“You mean,” she asked, “a love letter?”

A shrug. Call it what you like. She crinkled open the envelope, trying to restrain her excitement. No one had ever written her a love letter. When she opened the page and read it, she could hear his voice as if from a distance, even though he was right next to her. The words both murdered her and made her whole. She touched his face as she read, just to feel him. And felt the kiss of his lips on her fingers. When she finished, when she reached the last word, she was no longer trying to hold back the tears from cooling her cheek. She gazed openly up into his face. Then raised her mouth to him and whispered her love into his ear. It was the first time she had used the word with him in a direct sentence.

He reacted by kissing her briefly. Brushing hair from her forehead. “It’s just a letter, Sigrid. Just what I’ve been thinking.”

She felt suddenly confused. Suddenly at risk. Something had gone off course in his voice. He dumped himself onto his back and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“Why did you marry your husband?” he inquired.

A blink. “Why?”

“You’re surprised at the question?”

“I am,” she admitted, “a little.”

“You said that I should ask about him.”

“I said that you
could
ask about him.”

“So you married for love? Is that correct? You loved him?”

She rearranged her face to accommodate her answer to this question. Perhaps she couldn’t quite imagine that he was so quickly turning the word against her. “Well. In some ways, yes, of course.”

But he cut her off. “Of course? Why, of course? You think it’s required?” Another puff from his cigarette. “You think it’s something ordained by God?”

“I don’t think I like this conversation.”

“You know what I believe? I believe God is a confidence man. And that love is his favorite swindle.”

A moment later, he was back on the bed, pushing into her. Pumping himself into her as if she were the holy repository for all his perfect sacrilege.

—

When Sigrid was fifteen, during a time when the Nazi Party was still merely a political curiosity in Berlin, there was a chubby old lady named Steinberg, who lived above the dingy flat, which Sigrid shared with her mother in the Salzbrunner Strasse. The old lady was losing her sight, so Sigrid would help her with cleaning and laundry and shopping after school dismissal, and for this Sigrid earned a few marks. It wasn’t so bad. Since her mother had taken a secretarial position at a Kreuzberg Blaupunkt factory to pay the rent, their flat always felt like an empty grave when Sigrid came home, so she didn’t mind having another place to be. Sitting in Frau Steinberg’s small living room, she often read the books that lined the shelves, sometimes aloud for the old lady’s benefit. She knew, of course, that Frau Steinberg was Jewish, but had never given this fact any great thought. On the mantel was a picture of Herr Steinberg in uniform with a medal pinned to his tunic from the Kaiser’s war. At Christmastime, Frau Steinberg distributed sweets to the children in the building. And if there was a tiny copy of Jewish scripture inserted into a small brass knickknack tacked to the front door frame, it didn’t seem to bother the neighbors much.

Then one afternoon, Frau Steinberg’s son arrived. His name was Fabian. He was not very tall, but physically very strongly built, with dark, lustrously palmated hair. There was a brawniness under the suit he wore, and when he smiled, Sigrid felt her stomach flip. When her mother met him, she saw a look on her mother’s face that made her highly suspect. It was the look usually reserved for the jewelry counter at KaDeWe. And Fabian’s look in return was not much different. It caused Sigrid a twinge of jealousy, the way they smiled at each other. And she certainly didn’t like the way her mother questioned her at supper
. So you say he’s a salesman?

Of some sort.

And he’s come back to Berlin?

Only temporarily
, Sigrid had answered, though she had made that up.

Did you see the shirt he was wearing? That was real silk.

Sigrid frowned. She had paid no attention to his shirt.

He must do well, don’t you think?
But at this point, Sigrid could tell that her mother was now talking to herself, not to her daughter.

Dinners and outings followed, with Sigrid present. Then dinners and outings followed
without
her present. It made Sigrid angry, and to get back at her mother, she started copying her father’s mannerisms: fortifying herself behind printed words at the supper table, answering questions with a dull, ironic huff of breath followed by a flat grunt of disapproval, all in attempt to conjure her father’s ghost and sting her mother with the memory of her absent husband. But her mother simply ignored her and talked about the French automobile that Fabian had bought.

A Renault the color of ripe cherries.

A huff of breath. Not even a German car. Followed by a flat grunt of disapproval.

Then there was a morning when Sigrid woke up at first light only to find Fabian leaving their flat. She stood there, clutching her dressing gown closed over her flannel nightclothes, staring at him in shock. He only smiled his smile in return, and chirped, “Be smart at school today, blondie.” He had started calling her that. “Study hard.”

A few moments later, her mother came bustling into the room, in a pale blue satin nightgown, with a flimsy lace top that left her bosom largely exposed. Sigrid had never seen her in such a thing before. Her mother stopped dead at Sigrid’s stare, but only for the length of a breath to recalculate. Then she hurried toward the kitchen. “You’re up early,” was all she said. Sigrid said nothing.

In fact, Sigrid said nothing for the rest of the day. It was only after dinner when her mother was boiling coffee that she blurted out the words. “Are you going to marry him?”

Her mother offered her the thinnest of glances as she lit up a cigarette.

“Marry whom, Liebchen?”

Sigrid frowned. “Herr Steinberg, of course,” she blurted. “
Fabian.
”

Her mother formed an odd smile shaped around something sharp and painful. “Liebchen,” she began, drowsily, then spewed out smoke. “That would never happen.”

“Why?” Sigrid had demanded. “Because he doesn’t love you?”

And now a flash of pain colored her mother’s eyes. “Oh, no. I’m sure he loves me.”

“Then
why
?” Sigrid was a little afraid now. Afraid of what was coming.

“Because of
you,
of course.”

“Me?”

“He’s a Jew, child.” And then her voice became blandly incredulous. “I could never permit a Jew to become your father.”

Sigrid saw Fabian perhaps a week later, standing out in the street in front of their flat. But her mother only closed the shades. “I’ve spoken to Frau Schultz across the street. She needs help with her housework, and will pay two marks a day.”

“Frau Schultz?”

“The money will come in handy. Look at you, you’re growing out of your clothes,” her mother observed with a dim reproach informing her voice. “Soon you’ll be popping out of our blouse.”